Miscellaneous

Putting the "U" in Unanimity

By Anne Skove, Esq.

Gotta love Justice Powell! He left us with so many legal conundrums that bloggers, legal analysts, judges, and lawyers have job security for a lifetime.

Dear Justice Powell, what were you thinking in Apodaca v. Oregon when you decided the right to a unanimous jury verdict in criminal cases was not incorporated? Did you not read the many histories of jury use and management that pepper our law libraries? Do you have an aversion to legal history? Were you too busy planning your next trip to MetroLex? What happened to your good Old Dominion sense of "we've always done it this way?" Or were you just, as we noted supra, being kind to future generations?

Well, no matter. Your descendants on the SCOTUS (as we fondly call it now) will hammer out a solution. Perhaps it will involve treating Louisiana as the foreign state that it is. Perhaps it will bring Louisiana into the Middle Ages, which is how far back unanimity dates. Or not.

See Do Guilty Verdicts Have to Be Unanimous?, Ben Winograd, SCOTUSblog (September 29, 2008), and Near Unanimity on Unanimity, Ethan Leib, Prawfsblawg (September 2, 2008).

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on September 30, 2008 (boomark / email).