Ramos v. Louisiana
The Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires unanimous jury verdicts in all state criminal trials, overturning a 1972 precedent that had allowed Louisiana and Oregon to convict defendants on 10-to-2 jury votes.
The decision means that a single dissenting juror is now enough to prevent a criminal conviction in every state, and defendants in those two states who were convicted by non-unanimous juries and whose appeals are still pending are entitled to new trials.
“it is something else entirely to perpetuate something we all know to be wrong only because we fear the consequences of being right.”
The majority's closing argument for why stare decisis cannot justify leaving Ramos in prison under an admittedly unconstitutional verdict.
How it got here: A Louisiana state court convicted Ramos; the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the conviction; the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Evangelisto Ramos was convicted of a serious crime in Louisiana by a 10-to-2 jury vote and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Two jurors believed the state had not proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In 48 other states and federal court, those two dissenting votes would have produced a mistrial. Louisiana and Oregon were the only states that allowed such non-unanimous convictions — a practice Louisiana first adopted at an 1898 constitutional convention whose stated goal was to establish white supremacy and dilute the influence of Black jurors.
The question before the Court
Does the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial require a unanimous verdict to convict someone of a serious crime, and does that requirement apply equally in state courts?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Sixth Amendment requires a unanimous jury verdict to convict a person of a serious crime, and that requirement applies with equal force in state and federal court. The amendment's text and history point unmistakably to unanimity: the requirement emerged in 14th-century England, was standard in American states at the founding, and the Supreme Court had affirmed it at least 13 times over 120 years. Because incorporated rights carry the same meaning against states as against the federal government, Louisiana's 10-to-2 verdicts violated the Constitution.
The Court also overruled Apodaca v. Oregon (1972), the fractured decision that had appeared to permit non-unanimous state verdicts. That 1972 ruling produced no controlling opinion — the decisive ninth vote rested on a "dual-track" incorporation theory the Court had already rejected — and even if Apodaca had been a valid precedent, it was so grievously wrong and so devoid of genuine reliance interests that the doctrine of following prior decisions could not save it.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Defendants in Louisiana and Oregon convicted by non-unanimous juries while their cases are still on direct appeal are entitled to retrial. Any future state that wanted to allow split-jury convictions could no longer do so. The ruling ends a practice the Court traced directly to Jim Crow-era efforts to make the votes of Black jurors meaningless, and it restores a centuries-old safeguard against wrongful conviction.
What changes now
Louisiana and Oregon must retry defendants convicted by non-unanimous juries whose cases are still pending on direct appeal — Oregon estimated more than a thousand such cases. Whether today's ruling reaches prisoners whose direct appeals are already final (through habeas corpus challenges) is explicitly left open; the Court says that question will be resolved in future litigation under the Teague doctrine, which generally bars retroactive application of new procedural rules. Louisiana had already amended its constitution to require unanimous verdicts for crimes committed on or after January 1, 2019.
What this does not decide
The ruling expressly does not decide whether the unanimity requirement applies retroactively to prisoners whose direct appeals are already complete. That question — which could affect far more people through habeas corpus proceedings — is left for future cases where the parties can brief it fully. The Court also does not address jury unanimity rules for petty offenses or civil trials.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor joined all but the section of the majority opinion arguing that Apodaca was never a precedent at all (Part IV-A). Writing separately, she emphasized three points: overruling Apodaca is compelled, not merely justified; the states' reliance interests here are far weaker than in recent cases where the Court upheld erroneous precedents in the economic sphere; and the racist origins of Louisiana's and Oregon's laws deserve explicit acknowledgment, because their legislatures never truly confronted that history when reenacting the rules.
Concurrence in part — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh joined the core holding but not the portions of Justice Gorsuch's opinion addressing whether Apodaca had any precedential force and the final reliance-interests analysis. He wrote separately to lay out a three-part structured test for when to overrule a constitutional precedent — asking whether the prior decision is egregiously wrong, whether it has caused significant negative consequences, and whether overruling would unduly upset reliance — and applied each factor to conclude Apodaca should go. He also concluded, without full briefing, that today's ruling will not apply retroactively on federal habeas review.
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed that Ramos's conviction was unconstitutional but concurred only in the judgment, not in any part of the majority's reasoning. He would have decided the case by applying the Court's longstanding precedents recognizing a Sixth Amendment unanimity right without reopening the historical analysis. Most distinctively, he argued that the right to jury unanimity is enforceable against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause — not the Due Process Clause that the rest of the Court (implicitly) used — and he criticized due process incorporation as a 'demonstrably erroneous' reading of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Dissent — Justice Alito
Justice Alito argued that Apodaca was a valid precedent — properly understood as prescribing a clear result even without a majority rationale — and that the majority's contrary view would destabilize decades of decisions issued without majority opinions. He contended the majority's stare decisis analysis is deeply flawed: the reliance interests of Louisiana and Oregon, which tried thousands of cases under Apodaca's authority over 48 years, are massive and concrete, dwarfing those in any recent overruling. He also objected sharply to the majority's invocation of the racist origins of Louisiana's and Oregon's laws as irrelevant to the broad constitutional question presented and unfair to states that re-enacted their rules for legitimate reasons. Justice Kagan joined all but Part III-D, which compared the reliance interests here to those in other recent overruling cases.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Sixth Amendment's guarantee of 'trial by an impartial jury' carried an established historical meaning at ratification: jury unanimity. That requirement emerged in 14th-century England, appeared in most early state constitutions, was affirmed in post-ratification treatises, and had been recognized by the Supreme Court at least 13 times over 120 years. The Constitution's text and structure would be hollowed out if the written guarantee of a jury trial conveyed no content about how that jury must function.
- Because the Sixth Amendment jury-trial right is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, it applies with exactly the same force in state court as in federal court — no 'watered-down' version is permitted. Dual-track incorporation, the idea that a single right can mean different things depending on whether the federal or state government is the defendant, had been squarely rejected by the Court nearly a decade before the 1972 Apodaca decision.
- Apodaca v. Oregon produced no controlling opinion: four justices would have struck down non-unanimous state verdicts outright, four others would have allowed them under a functionalist reading of the Sixth Amendment, and the decisive ninth vote (Justice Powell) agreed that the Sixth Amendment demands unanimity but cast his vote for the state based on dual-track incorporation — a theory the Court had already foreclosed. A judgment resting on a rationale that a majority has already rejected cannot bind future cases.
- The Court applied the traditional factors for deciding whether to preserve precedent — quality of reasoning, consistency with related decisions, reliance interests — and all pointed toward overruling. Apodaca's plurality never grappled seriously with the Sixth Amendment's history or the racist origins of the Louisiana and Oregon laws; it has sat uneasily with 120 years of case law ever since; and no party could point to anyone who had signed a contract, entered a marriage, or opened a business in reliance on the right to convict by a 10-to-2 vote.
- The only concrete reliance interests were Louisiana's and Oregon's need to retry defendants whose non-unanimous convictions remain on direct appeal — a cost that routinely follows new criminal-procedure rules and is here limited to two states. The separate question of whether today's ruling applies retroactively to prisoners whose direct appeals are already finished is governed by the Teague doctrine (which generally bars retroactive application of new procedural rules) and is expressly left for future proceedings.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Overrules Apodaca v. Oregon (406 U.S. 404)
The 1972 ruling that states could convict on 10-to-2 jury votes is expressly overruled; unanimous verdicts are now required in all state criminal trials.