In England majority verdicts of 10 to 2 are allowed. Initially the jury will be instructed to come to a unanimous decision but once it becomes obvious that they can’t agree, the judge, often after consulting the head of the prosecution and defence teams, will accept a majority verdict. This can be after a few hours in simple cases or a few days in a complex case.
I’ve been on 5 juries and I’ve always been impressed at how seriously the jury members take their duties. So I feel this miscarriage was more down to the attitude or even prejudices of the jury than anything else
By the way, on one jury we found the defendant innocent by majority verdict. If a unanimous verdict had been necessary then we’d have been a hung jury and the defendant would have faced a retrial
5
I've been on various juries over the years, and have, at times, been disturbed at the lack of critical thinking and the willingness to allow irrelevant information to affect views on the part of some jurors. I am glad we have a jury system - -and while I have had generally positive experiences -- the negative parts would make me concerned if I were ever to be judged by a jury of my peers.
19
Let's see. "Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who have shown an interest in applying the Bill of Rights uniformly to the states"
Interesting that those two, who were demonized by the Left, are interested that the Bill of Rights, and presumably all other aspects of the Constitution, be applied equally across all states.
I would expect that anyone who truly believes in equality before the law would want the same. But I can also see where special interests, which maintain absolute control in some states, like California, would not want such equality.
8
Peer pressure is strong. Someone who was a leader in the jury convinced the weaker minded jurors do overcome their ideals.
16
There is no such thing as a jury that is representative of the population since persons who have been convicted of crimes by the criminal law system are not on juries.
12
Excellent example of good journalism!! Thanks once again, NYTimes: you guys are what reporting is all about. // Once again, a dramatic example of just how badly the "justice" system in the USA is broken: when one eyewitness and almost ZERO other evidence, can convince 10 out of 12 jurors of a person's guilt in a murder case - as serious and extreme a charge as possible - then something is radically wrong, especially when the doubts of the other 2 jurors are set aside and ignored. Its a well known fact that eyewitness testimony is the weakest, least reliable form of evidence in a trial; this is a simple fact that all judges and juries need to be reminded of as often as necessary. I hope the next president of the USA as a plan for at least SOME improvements to be made to an exceptionally dysfunctional, unjust system of determining guilt or innocence when laws are broken.
19
The details of what the other jurors said during deliberations are what make this piece so persuasive and devastating.
When you have a jury of your peers comprised of people of marginal sophistication and/or cognitive function, there is no jury system in the world which will be even close to just or functional.
Doctors certainly face this prospect in malpractice trials, where the jurors are frequently ill prepared to understand or follow the facts and concepts integral to the case presented them. In the criminal case of Mr. Shannon, a minimal competence on the part of his defense attorney might have rescued him, but, listening to the jurors, even that is not certain.
23
A five hour trial and two hours deliberation...over a man's life. This article, though riveting and fantastic, makes me nauseous. The bullying of jurors, the plying of defendants with drugs, hiding of evidence and the continued use of unreliable eyewitness testimony are all bad enough on their own. But add to that split-jury verdicts and what a horrible humanitarian disaster.
Oh, and Angola is a former plantation. Seems about right.
Our criminal justice system is a racist sham. I hope Shannon and others have help when suing once exonerated. These poor people deserve major compensation and the states deserve to be bankrupted by their corruption and missing morals.
Thank God for organizations like Innocence Project and others who are willing to attempt to make up for the shortfalls of these horrible states and municipalities, but we need real change.
51
Louisiana has a right decision.
HoweverIt it should be five not 2, or a mistrial.
Everything in Louisiana is a scam and a lie, and that goes double for their antiquated and extremely biased criminal justice system. Anything involving state government has been co-opted by crony corruption. To all that come here, know that you have left the United States.
26
Convicted beyond all reasonable doubt........there IS DOUBT if one or two jurors cannot convict!
Sickening, that "partiality" has been allowed! By "partiality" I am referring to jurors' objections to guilty verdicts. Trials for capital offenses should always result in "hung jury" declarations. There is very obviously "reasonable doubt"!
6
America: The home of the bestest justice MONEY can buy.
17
The author neglected to mention one major source of non-unanimous verdicts in the United States: the military justice system. In all except death penalty cases, a military panel (equivalent to a jury) need only three quarters of the members for a finding of guilty.
18
Ignored by many who comment here is that this gravely unjust rule is made even worse by the fact that the Supreme Court has permitted not only less than unanimous criminal convictions, but also permitted juries composed of fewer than 12 persons.
Put those 2 injustices together and you have them feeding on each other where the whole becomes a greater injustice than the sum of its unjust parts.
13
I was not aware either that there could be non-unanimous jury, so a very interesting and insightful article. I would strongly advice any one interesting in the jury dynamic and the balance of strong/weak personalities in jury deliberation to watch "12 angry men" by Sydney Lumet, which captures quite well these issues. This movie was in 1957, so none of these issues are new, but still pretty much present. It also demonstrates why you want an unanimous jury.
12
If the Supreme Court, the final arbiter of American justice, doesn't require a unanimous verdict why should any other court? Not sure I quite understand the legal rationale. Is it just tradition? I'm not suggesting the unanimous verdict be done away with in capital cases, just asking for the logic behind it.
1
@larry bennett are you kidding me larry? courts and juries have different roles.
juries decide facts and then apply those to the relevant statute or law and reach a verdict. Courts decide specific legal issues, and appellate courts' review is cabined by applicable standards of review.
The Supreme Court, in other words, is not deciding whether someone is "guilty." Nor do they decide facts like whether the defendant was armed at the time of a crime or whether he sold a specific quantity of drugs.
Instead, the Supreme Court--which only comes in after at least four other judges have looked at an issue, and sometimes even more--decides something like, "is there legally insufficient evidence for a rationale juror to have found the defendant used a gun at the time of the offense?" Or even, "was it an abuse of discretion for the trial court to let X witness testify?"
12
A moving story. Of course in 1971, I was on a multiple murder trial in NY. One juror remarked pre-deliberations when the Kennedy assassination came up that "you couldn't know anything if you weren't there." Uh oh, I thought. Sure enough come deliberations, he was adamant in the face of overwhelming evidence: "You couldn't know anything if you weren't there." I don't know how to solve the problem of the unreasonable juror. I've been on many other juries since---once I was the "unreasonable" juror, e.g., the holdout so I'm not against the holdout if the holdout engages and is honest in her, his role as juror.
11
What happened to the principle that it's more just that a guilty defendant walk free than to convict one innocent?
Thought experiment: how would the Shannon trial have proceeded if the key witness Burgoyne were African American, defendant Shannon were white, and juror Morrison were white?
It's less shocking that a state with a 200-year history of slavery and Jim Crow allows this than the possibility that our Supreme Court will allow it to continue.
8
I don't believe that Louisiana's policy of majority jury rulings is based on discrimination as this article states. It is my understanding that Louisiana based their legal system on the French (rather than English as other states). France (according to Wikipedia) still requires a 2/3 majority, not a unanimous decision for felony convictions.
1
@Ken The article states that Lousiana did require unanimous juries and then changed the requirement in 1880. "The first introduction of split verdicts in the state was in 1880, after Reconstruction ended," Nothing to do with the French Legal System.
28
This article makes a strong case for requiring unanimous juries. If one believes, as I do, that it is better to risk letting a guilty person go free than to wrongly convict someone who is innocent, then unanimous juries should be mandatory.
But there are many who, understandably if wrongly, very much worry about letting the guilty escape punishment. This is especially true when emotions are running high, for violent crimes such as murder and rape. Failing to convict and freeing a guilty person may allow him or her to repeat the offenses.
There is a clear tradeoff. My personal believe is that jury unanimity should be required.
New Yorkers may soon face a test in the Harvey Weinstein case. It would not surprise me if there is a hung jury. Based on the information presented in the media, questions may arise in the minds of some jurors over the meaning of consent, and it is possible the jury will be unable to reach a unanimous verdict,
8
There for the grace of God go I.
Try to find it in yourself to donate to one of the organizations that have freed these innocents, and are involved in freeing others.
24
It being a criminal case, at least Justice Thomas will vote against requiring unanimous juries. I don't think he has ever voted for a convicted person's favor in his entire career.
14
Since Louisiana can convict on the basis of one witness, you compound the possibility of wrongful convictions.
12
It could be Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi or Arkansas. Just watch the film 'Just Mercy'. It is still the leftover from slaveholders days when the defeat of these states and others in the Civil War was thwarted by institutional racism from the 1870's through today. Many white folk are still fighting the War that their mommy and daddy lost, and they will keep fighting it until the full weight of the federal government crushes the last of the South's bigotry.
15
@Rick Joners It is not only happening in the South but right near you in New York. I know an innocent man who is serving 25 to life for a murder he did not commit (there is ample proof, but the inept original attorneys did not bring forth security videos, DNA testing and other exonerating factors. The prosecutor was drooling for a guilty verdict and instructed the jury in ways that confused them and caused them to ignore some of the evidence. He has been in prison for more than 10 years, working through his many appeals. It is a system rotten to the core.
19
I now live in left-wing Oregon, the other state that allows less than unanimous juries. Focus on racial discrimination is not appropriate regarding the issue of allowing less than unanimous criminal verdicts.
There is ONLY one reason why less than unanimous verdicts are allowed....to make it easier to convict defendants Allowing such verdicts is an injustice against EVERY defendant, even those who never go to trial since it increases the pressure on those accused to accept plea deals regardless whether they are guilty or innocent.
Allowing non-unanimous criminal verdicts is offensive to justice regardless of race. Those who focus on a racial aspect are implicitly endorsing less than unanimous verdicts when persons of minority races are not on trial.
The Supreme Court should never have allowed any less than unanimous criminal convictions. Hopefully, they will correct their endorsement of injustice. But I have absolutely no faith in US criminal law enforcement, in the courts, in the judges, in the prosecutors, in the defense attorneys, or in the people who serve as jurors.
p.s. I have never been personally victim of this grave injustice....that is absolutely not the source of my long held views on the subject.
12
Unanimous juries would seem to me to present a problem:
Peer pressure to reach a verdict in order to simply get the trial done. Especially in long trials.
No one wants to hold everyone else back from getting back to their lives, work, and families. I wouldn't be surprised if many juries have strong dissenters that simply go along with the majority.
7
@Scott Cole
It would be interesting to see a study about what you bring up. Commission one, if needed. But thus far it seems your point is only conjecture.
1
@CitizenTM
That was my experience in an armed robbery case involving a single eyewitness at night down the subway platform, a conflicting alibi, and a puzzling lack of other information. After a night in a hotel in Queens, some jurors switched to the majority, admitting they didn't want to be sequestered another night. Two held out, and the jury was hung.
11
I seem to remember a quote along the lines of "it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to convict an innocent man."
I did not know about non-unanimous juries until today. And, while I'm shocked that this practice has been legally sanctioned in the past, I am heartened that, at least on this issue, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh appear to be on the right and moral side of the case before them. That at least gives one hope for our justice system.
36
There split-jury rules may be discriminatory but I would suggest they are an attempt to account for disparities in the jury pool. When jurors with little knowledge in civics or duties in a judicial settling are seated there is a problem.
How do we ensure that ALL seated jurors are qualified to perform the duties required ?
2
@SSS When jurors with a desire to railroad a defendant are seated, there is a problem.
I thought it was the responsibility and duty of the legal 'professionals' to ensure ALL seated jurors are qualified to perform the duties required?
The cost of finding them seems to be the issue, both in the cost of calling a large enough juror pools and the cost of upsetting the vacation schedules of those legal 'professionals'.
Split juries are just a legal expedience to suit the convenience of The State.
18
@Baxter
I think the point is to understand the origin of the split-jury system in the South as an attempt to restore white supremacy in the late 1890s, and to recognize how lower state and appeals courts have a responsibility to rectify the terrible inustices of resulting convictions. The diversity and competence of the jury pool has always been a problem, as well as the corruption at all levels of prosecution practices. Criminal justice reform should have the same passionate commitment that other issues have in this election year and should start with awarding retrials to the thousands of people incarcerated for life under split-jury convictions.
18
@SSS That is the point of a jury pool: a group of twelve unqualified individuals who make up a random and representative sample of our peers. You cannot ensure jurors are qualified any more than you can ensure voters are qualified. Their layman status is the very crux of our system.
5
When one of the jurors say that if the prosecutor said the defendant had to be removed from the streets, then he had to be removed from the streets -- What kind of instruction do the jurors receive? There is something very important missing.
Are jurors told that this is wrong? Are they made to understand that there is a reason why you have courts of trial? That there is a reason why it's not just left to the prosecution to decide who goes to jail? That the jurors are there to catch errors and weaknesses in the prosecution? That their job is to try, not just the defendant's, but also the prosecutor's case?
45
@Cacadril That is why we need highly qualified judges that aren't pure partisan appointees.
15
Unresolved dissension is clear evidence of possible mistaken verdicts. As Valerie Hans, the quoted Cornell law professor, writes, "The group discussion helps juror individually and collectively to clarify their positions and conclusions and increases their certainty that they are reaching the fright verdict." Without such group discussion, among 12 people with equal standing in the process, mistakes are more likely to occur. Allowing non-unanimous verdicts diminishes one or two jurors such that they become irrelevant and their arguments ignored. The fictional movie, "12 Angry Men," is a one public example of this dynamic and the virtue of unanimous verdicts.
38
Bazelon is an excellent reporter, and for me, this paragraph stood out:
"Morrison wanted to hear from other eyewitnesses to the killing. Earlier in the trial, the homicide detective who investigated the shooting testified that he’d interviewed the two men standing next to the victim, a 46-year-old named Ralph Cole, and four additional people who were nearby when the shooting took place. But when Bourgoyne finished testifying, the prosecution rested. Shannon’s lawyer called no witnesses. The trial ended after only about five hours."
Failing to call witnesses, combined with all the research showing the discriminatory effects of lower-standard, non-unanimous juries, plus Louisiana's notorious record of wrongful convictions, are reasons enough to understand why the defendant should not have been convicted. The fact that a judge threw out the conviction in 2017 proves it.
Thank you for the excellent reporting on this and related stories.
72
The theme of the less aggressive participants in a jury being 'railroaded' by one or more domineering individuals kept coming up. This form of bullying can cost an innocent defendant their freedom, if not their life. What if juries appear to be in agreement to convict, but in reality one or more of the jurors disagree but fall in line with the majority?
Makes you wonder how a system full of human flaws and foibles can be fair.
43
Although the article makes good points about the weaknesses of these majority verdicts, it doesn't look into reasons other than racism for majority verdicts.
Several Australian jurisdictions now allow for juries to convict if there is one dissenting juror. Law typically requires juries to have deliberated for a certain length of time.
The point is to prevent one unreasonable juror from derailing the trial. It isn't perfect, but it has its merits - if 11 people are willing to convict you, that is quite a strong signal.
1
@Tony Please read the article and note that almost by definition if you are the one or two dissenters in a group of 12 jurors you are unreasonable in that context. Being unreasonable may be the consequence of being thoughtful and conscientious. If you were in the shoes of any of the folks mentioned as being unjustly convicted, would you still advocate for a split decision? Of course not.
52
@Tony
Dissenting jurors are often more reasonable, more independent, more reasonable and more impartial than the jurors who go along with the opinion of the majority.
19
@Tony Is it a strong signal when eye witness testimony is proven to be unreliable? Is it a strong signal when prosecutors bury evidence? Is it a strong signal when defense attorneys are derelict in their duties? Is it a strong signal when alpha jurors bully more passive jurors?
This is literally life or death, that is quite a strong signal.
21