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In England, the birthplace of the modern jury, the need for unanimous verdicts was established in 1367, when a court refused to accept an 11-to-1 guilty vote, after one juror said he’d rather die in prison than consent to convict. The practice spread to the American colonies along with many other elements of British common law. The Constitution provided for the right to trial by jury in the Sixth Amendment. click here to access article from NYT about 10-2 convictions in Louisiana The text uses the word “impartial,” not “unanimous,” but judges of the founding era commonly issued instructions saying that unanimity was part of the jury right, and commentators agreed. “It is the unanimity of the jury that preserves the rights of mankind,” John Adams, the future president, wrote in 1786. In a line of cases from 1898 to 1948, the Supreme Court said that the Sixth Amendment required unanimous verdicts.
In many countries, judges, not juries, decide a defendant’s guilt. Others — France, Italy and Japan, for example — rely on a mixed group of laypeople and judges to deliver a verdict, without requiring consensus. But these are countries in which prosecutors play a more neutral fact-finding role. In the United States and Canada, the unanimous jury, like the high bar of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, remains a bulwark against state power and the risk of convicting the innocent. It also helps ensure that the jury represents a cross-section of the community: If every vote counts, then the majority can’t ignore the minority. Louisiana and Oregon are the only states (along with Puerto Rico) that have deviated from unanimous jury convictions. In Louisiana, black people began to serve on juries during Reconstruction, when they won the right to vote. The first introduction of split verdicts in the state was in 1880, after Reconstruction ended, as part of a movement of white Southerners to re-establish their supremacy. |