Convicting an accused person of a serious offense with a less-than-unanimous jury verdict, as two states had allowed, runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a right to a jury trial, the Supreme Court has determined.
The 6–3 ruling concerning split jury verdicts came April 20 in a case cited as Ramos v. Louisiana. The decision also overturns Apodaca v. Oregon, a 1972 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of nonunanimous criminal convictions in serious felony cases tried in state courts.
