Description

LEGAL BRIEF FORMAT

1.                  Name of Case:  Ramos v. Louisiana

2.                  Legal Citation:   Ramos v. Louisiana 2016–1199 (La. App. 4 Cir. 11/2/17), 231 so. 3d 44.

3.                  Parties: Ramos v. Louisiana

4.                  Facts of Case:

A.    A. Eight of the twelve jurors, after deliberation, decided that perhaps the prosecutors had proved their argument toward Ramos beyond a shadow of a doubt, whereas two jurors came to the opposite conclusion.

B.     Evangelista Ramos has been charged with third-degree murder and has claimed his right to a jury trial by court.

C.     Under Louisiana's majority jury verdict rule, approval of only ten jurors is necessary to award a conviction.

D.     Ramos was sentenced to life imprisonment, no probation.

5.                  Issue (in question format-Whether….):

Should the Fourteenth Amendment completely implement the Sixth Amendment assurance against Governments of a guilty verdict?

6.                  Answer:

Justice Gorsuch, writing for the same majority, clarified how the case-law of the Court came in require Oregon and Louisiana to require non-unanimous jury verdicts, explaining the divided views on consensus in those cases.

7.                  Ruling (in favor of):

In the judgment, Justice Clarence Thomas submitted another opinion than concurred. From the outset, Justice Thomas acknowledged that immunity from non-unanimous jury verdicts, and would thus address the problem there. He will also argue that a unanimous decision in favor of a conviction in federal court, but would conclude that it is applied against the States by the Rights or Immunities Clause.

8.                  The reasoning of Court:

The Court concluded that the slippery slope had gone not far enough. The opinion of Justice Blackmun for the Court, based on a series of observational research demonstrating issues with smaller juries, found that Georgia's law requiring five-person criminal juries violated the rights of the accused in the Sixth Amendment. Although intervening in the decision, Justice Powell, along with two other judges, reiterated that he did not agree that the Fourteenth Amendment placed precisely the same jury conditions on states as the Sixth Amendment applied to the government.

9.                  Comments (your personal opinion of the outcome –was it fair?):

According to my suggestion, Justice Gorsuch, again speaking for the plurality, dismissed Louisiana’s claims in support of non-unanimous jury verdicts, finding that the drafting history of the Sixth Amendment is at best unclear, that the logic of the Apodaca plurality was "skimpy" and, most significantly, that the Apodaca plurality "subjected to its functionalist evaluation the ancient assurance of a conclusive judge's ruling.