Thread by @davidminpdx

1. Yesterday I watched a pretty remarkable hearing in New Orleans where thirteen men convicted by nonunanimous juries, some decades ago, were resentenced, mostly to time served. If I were a criminal law professor, I would assign it to students. nola.com/news/courts/ar…

2. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in a courtroom. In most courtrooms, one rarely sees people, defendants or otherwise, take responsibility for the harm that they caused. Our system rarely incentivizes that. But this was different.

3. All of the men were convicted by nonunanimous juries – juries that the Supreme Court has said were “racist” and violate the 6th Amendment. But that didn’t mean they were legally entitled to be retried. Law in this area is complex and “finality” is often preferred over justice.

4. But the DA’s office, led by a newly elected reformer, Jason Williams, is different than his predecessors. The office decided to waive procedural/technical objections to the defendants getting the benefit of the Supreme Court decision outlawing nonunanimous juries.

5. The judge, also a newly elected reformer, allowed the DA to waive the procedural objections and overturned the men’s convictions. The DA could have retried the men, but instead they worked out plea deals. What had been decades-long/life sentences were reduced to time served.

6. But as part of that process the victims and witnesses were heard, some directly, some via statements read by prosecutors. Some victims were raw. Some remained very angry. Others were forgiving. One man, shot in the face two decades ago, held a photo of his injuries.

7. The harms they described were severe and heartbreaking. In one instance, the prosecutor talked about how, as part of his effort to contact victims, he had reached a woman who was dying in hospice to tell her the man who injured her would be getting a reduced sentence.

8. The DA’s office itself took responsibility for the harm it had caused – needlessly using an outlier and unconstitutional nonunanimous jury rule that had been grounded in white supremacy. In my life I had never heard a DA’s office take responsibility like that before. Never.

9. And the defendants themselves, so often told by their lawyers in trial court never to take responsibility, took responsibility, one after another. They talked about how they hurt the victims, how they let their family down, how they injured the community. Again and again.

10. Because these were resentencings, many of the men had spent decades in prison already. They had grown and changed a lot. Their lawyers described the good work they had done to better themselves and the community in prison. Some of what they said was beautiful and very wise.

11. Erik Beeman the man who was shot in the face said he supported immediate release for the man who shot him. He offered a fitting summation to the day. If trauma and tragedy must come to our lives, as unfair as it may be, perhaps the system can aspire to do better.