Jim Crow Juries
By
John C Abercrombie
Recently we saw a ruling by the United States that relates to the use of nonunanimous juries and the impact these juries have on the Black population. The ruling applies to cases going forward but did not provide a remedy to those previously incarcerated with these grossly unfair standards. In this post we will examine the results in detail, starting with how we got here.
It is generally accepted that for crimes involving incarceration of more than 6 months that it requires a unanimous jury. That is true in 48 states but not in Oregon or Louisiana. With Louisiana being the biggest offender. There are over 1,500 inmates in Louisiana serving sentences that were rendered under the nonunanimous juries with no relief in sight.
One of the principals that we often cited with respect to our justice system is “… justice for all” but is it really practiced in America?
In this post, we will look at a shocking case based on the 6th amendment to the United States Constitution which sets rights in regard to criminal prosecutions. The amendment was ratified in 1791 and is part of the Bill or Rights. These protections apply to the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment.
The 14th amendment was adopted in 1865 as a Reconstruction amendment and relates to former slaves after the American Civil War. Southern states were required to ratify the amendment to regain representation in the Congress.
In 48 of the 50 states, a single juror’s vote to acquit is enough to prevent the conviction of a defendant, but this is not the case in Oregon or Louisiana.
This matter was adjudicated in the case of Ramos v Louisiana. Ramos was convicted of a serious crime by a 10 to 2 jury verdict. In other 48 states, this would have resulted in a mistrial, instead, Ramos was sentenced to life without parole. Most of the people convicted in this manner not informed of this important fact.
We should be concerned about the entire justice system when we see examples of cases such as Willie McGee, who was convicted after 3 trials for rape which is a capital crime in Mississippi. Although the death penalty has been used to execute Blacks, it has never been used against a White convicted of the crime. McGee was sentenced after 2.5 minutes of deliberation in the first trial which was overturned on technical grounds, the 2nd trial took the jury all of 11 minutes again overturned on technical grounds. Do you know how hard it is to get a conviction of a Black person overturned in Mississippi? The 3rd trial is the classic case often referred to when the discussion is of a miscarriage of justice.
The youngest person executed in the United States was that of George Stinney, Jr. at the age of 14 in a similarly short deliberation. Stinney was convicted in the murder of 2 young White girls. The only evidence against Stinney is that he testified that he spoke to the 2 White girls who were looking for maypops in the area. Stinney was so frail that he had to be seated on a bible to be tall enough to execute.
Louisiana deserves credit for being forthright in stating the reason for adopting and using the non-unanimous juries, to “maintain White supremacy.” The United States Supreme Court ruled the use of these juries unconstitutional but did not state a remedy for the over 1,500 people convicted under the system. Louisiana has not seen fit to remedy this shameful practice leaving so many unfairly convicted people are facing additional decades of imprisonment.
We often see the same effect when Black people remain incarcerated after being convicted of the crime they were sentenced for. Prosecutors will stand behind the excuse that the conviction of the crime does not mean that the unfairly convicted person does not even get a new trial. Thus, a person convicted unfairly of a crime and facing decades in prison or even death does not deserve a new trial when evidence indicates they were not involved.
We also see cases where there is prosecutorial incompetence or the failure of the police to turn over evidence that could help prove the innocence of the unfairly convicted person. It is time to review and correct these injustices, not only for people of color, but ALL people as there are times when Whites without means are caught in the trap.
Of the 1,500+ persons incarcerated in Louisiana by non-unanimous juries 900 are serving life without the possibility of parole
The Louisiana Attorney General’s office argues that overturning these controversial cases would swamp the courts rather than look at the effect on the life of those unfairly convicted. This is callousness in the extreme.
The practice of non-unanimous juries was abolished by a vote of the Louisiana voters in 2019 but only affected trials after that date. The United States Supreme court ruled 6-3 to new trials for those convicted by split juries after that date, but there was no remedial relief for those convicted prior to that date.
A study of Louisiana cases shows that 40% of juries are divided and Blacks are 30% more likely than White defendants to be convicted by split juries. To date 1,543 split verdicts have been identified.
The 6th Amendment required those accused of criminal charges to be tried by a jury. Federal law requires a unanimous decision. States had been free to adopt their own requirements until the Apodaca v Oregon case in 1972. All but 2 stats adopted the unanimous conviction requirement, except Oregon and Louisiana. Is this ruling fair to the 1,543 incarcerated people to are allowed to language in prison?
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Until just a few years ago, people accused of a crime in Louisiana could be convicted by a non-unanimous jury.
60 Minutes+ reports on the efforts now underway to find and undo the injustices of split-jury convictions. “60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10.
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Law
Many people allow the subject of the law intimidate them. They believe that it is impossible to comprehend the law and consequences. That is only an excuse, and it can be conquered with the link below
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Jim Crow’s Last Stand:
Nonunanimous Criminal Jury Verdicts in Louisiana A remnant of the racist post-Reconstruction Redeemer sociopolitical agenda, Louisiana’s nonunanimous jury-verdict law permitted juries to convict criminal defendants with only nine, and later ten, out of twelve votes: a legal oddity. On the surface, it was meant to speed convictions. In practice, the law funneled many convicts―especially African Americans―into Louisiana’s burgeoning convict lease system. Although it faced multiple legal challenges through the years, the law endured well after convict leasing had ended. Few were aware of its existence, let alone its original purpose. In fact, the original publication of Jim Crow’s Last Stand was one of the first attempts to call attention to the historical injustice caused by this law.
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Wesley Lowery on his new 60 Minutes+ piece on “Jim Crow juries,
” the fight to get retrials 60 Minutes+ looks into so-called “Jim Crow juries” in Louisiana. Non-unanimous jury decisions were legal until a few years ago. Wesley Lowery looks into the effort to get those convicted retrials. Each weekday morning, “CBS This Morning” co-hosts Gayle King, Anthony Mason and Tony Dokoupil deliver two hours of original reporting, breaking news and top-level newsmaker interviews in an engaging and informative format that challenges the norm in network morning news programs.
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New Jim Crow, The MP3 CD – MP3
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Why the fight to overturn injustices of “Jim Crow juries”
isn’t over Some people in Louisiana are fighting for new trials after being convicted under so-called “Jim Crow juries.” Up until just a few years ago, people accused of a crime in the state could be convicted without a unanimous jury decision. Wesley Lowery joins CBSN AM with a preview of his new 60 Minutes+ report on the issue. CBSN is CBS News’ 24/7 digital streaming news service featuring live, anchored coverage available for free across all platforms. Launched in November 2014, the service is a premier destination for breaking news and original storytelling from the deep bench of CBS News correspondents and reporters. CBSN features the top stories of the day as well as deep dives into key issues facing the nation and the world. CBSN has also expanded to launch local news streaming services in major markets across the country. CBSN is currently available on CBSNews.com and the CBS News app across more than 20 platforms, as well as the Paramount+ subscription service
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Clothing and Accessories
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Inherit the Land:
Jim Crow Meets Miss Maggie s Will In the early twentieth century, two wealthy white sisters, cousins to a North Carolina governor, wrote identical wills that left their substantial homeplace to a black man and his daughter. Maggie Ross, whose sister Sallie died in 1909, was the richest woman in Union County, North Carolina. Upon Maggie’s death in 1920, her will bequeathed her estate to Bob Ross–who had grown up in the sisters’ household–and his daughter Mittie Bell Houston. Mittie had also grown up with the well-to-do women, who had shown their affection for her by building a house for her and her husband. This house, along with eight hundred acres, hundreds of dollars in cash, and two of the white family’s three gold watches went to Bob Ross and Houston. As soon as the contents of the will became known, more than one hundred of Maggie Ross’s scandalized cousins sued to break the will, claiming that its bequest to black people proved that Maggie Ross was mentally incompetent.
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What is a Jim Crow jury?
Why are more than 1,500 people still imprisoned in Louisiana – even though a jury couldn’t agree on their guilt? Our new video traces the origins of Jim Crow juries and sounds the alarm about their continuing impact on families.
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Cookware
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No Mercy Here:
Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Justice, Power, and Politics) In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries imprisoned black women faced wrenching forms of gendered racial terror and heinous structures of economic exploitation. Subjugated as convict laborers and forced to serve additional time as domestic workers before they were allowed their freedom, black women faced a pitiless system of violence, terror, and debasement. Drawing upon black feminist criticism and a diverse array of archival materials, Sarah Haley uncovers imprisoned women’s brutalization in local, county, and state convict labor systems, while also illuminating the prisoners’ acts of resistance and sabotage, challenging ideologies of racial capitalism and patriarchy and offering alternative conceptions of social and political life.
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The Death of the Non-Unanimous Jury
The legacy of Jim Crow continues to loom large in the United States. But nowhere is it arguably more evident than in Louisiana. In 1898, a constitutional convention successfully codified a slew of Jim Crow laws in a flagrant effort to disenfranchise black voters and otherwise infringe on their rights. “Our mission was to establish the supremacy of the white race in this State to the extent to which it could be legally and constitutionally done,” wrote Judiciary Committee Chairman Thomas Semmes.
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The justice system is represented by Lady Justice blindfolded for a reason. Not to be influenced by anything but the truth regardless of where it comes from and no matter who is involved. That is the ideal we shoot far, but as we have seen so many times there are many instances where this is not the case. It is necessary to leave the blindfold on Lady Justice, but we must take it off of our eyes and use our analytical skills to see what is being don and do something to again seek the ideals we hold so dear. Why is it that an American born Black woman is honored in France but not America? Sadly, this is not the only case where people are not valued in their home country. Only by discussing it can we resolve it.