re: Louisiana's Non-Unanimous Jury Verdict - SB243

I wish Alabama would adopt this policy.

10-2 should be enough for an acquittal, but not for a conviction. That should be unanimous.

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I'm just kind of a fan of that "beyond reasonable doubt" standard and if 16% of the people can't be convinced

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If you had read my earlier post you'd know that the two women who voted not guilty in our trial based their vote 100% on emotions that the defendant had led a hard life and was forced to confess by the police.

All of the evidence showed he was lying about being forced to confess.

The tape we heard of his confession showed zero evidence of it being forced. He was almost gleeful talking about wanting the kill his landlord. He was laughing about it. He was proud of it, even sort of bragging about it.

One of the firemen who arrived with the firetruck to put out the house on fire testified that when they arrived they saw the defendant across the street on his knees with his pants down masturbating while looking at the house burning. The firemen pointed out the guy to the police when the cops arrived on the scene.

The defendant was a real sicko who literally got off on the thought of burning someone to death.

So it wasn't "reasonable doubt" that the two women had. It was just women being emotional women feeling sorry for the guy. They probably watched too much Oprah over the years.

I only have a BA in political science. I am not a lawyer nor am I in law school, but 10/12 is fine with me. The 6th Amendment calls for a trial by jury of your peers, which is what you're getting. Though I'm open to being shown if I'm wrong.

How is jury instruction done in Louisiana? Do you use civil law for criminal, or common law like the rest of us?

I do tend to think btw, that a hung jury should result in the defendant walking. A retrial is BS. It gives the side that was losing a chance to have a do over, like taking an exam for a second time after seeing the answer key. At that point, the potential jury pool is tainted, especially if it's a high profile case.

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I believe that the change would make the system congruent logically to the legal standard. Not sure how it’s possible to have 2 no votes on conviction and argue that there is no reasonable doubt of guilt.

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I'll tell you how this can happen pretty simply.

I'm an attorney and somehow I was on a murder 2 trial in New Orleans. No one on the jury thought the guy didn't do it. The vote was 10-2 for Guilty of Murder 2 which carries a life sentence. The other 2 were in for Manslaughter, and in my honest opinion, just didn't quite understand the legal standard for it. A mere verbal squabble isn't enough to reduce the charge.

Anywho, as foreman, I wasn't going to waste everyone's time moving those 2 over to Murder 2 to get a unanimous verdict we didn't need.

Funny enough even the judge messed this up and announced it into the record as 10 Guilty, 2 not guilty, and the prosecutor had to correct him that they merely "didn't agree to the verdict" which is different than not guilty.

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I'm not deflecting. I'm telling you what the judge said to us after the trial ended.

If you want to believe the judge didn't say what he told us, even though you weren't there and I was,

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I've already conceded that he likely told you exactly what you said. It's my position that he gave you just enough information to be dangerous. If he was going to tell you that at all, he should have explained why the new trials were granted in the first place.

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or if you want to create a scenario in your mind that the prosecutor was incompetent, that's your arrogant choice to do so.

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How is it arrogant to point out that there was an easy, well known method to get in the testimony that even you admitted in your first post would have been crucial, and that he didn't use it? And in not doing so, he was incompetent?

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But that "incompetent" prosecutor got a guilty verdict and sent a real sicko murderer to Angola.

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And the fact that an utterly incompetent prosecutor who left out utterly crucial evidence was able to stumble arse backwards into a conviction speaks to both the strength of the other evidence in the case as well as just how stacked up the system is against a criminal defendant.

And by the way, someone doing 20 years probably isn't going to serve that time at Angola. Just FYI.

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Anywho, as foreman, I wasn't going to waste everyone's time moving those 2 over to Murder 2 to get a unanimous verdict we didn't need.

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This is actually a great example. You did what you should have done under the current system. However, do you think, had you spent a bit more time with them, that they likely would have come around to murder?

Now, this is granting it was merely a minor verbal squabble and that they weren't right to begin with

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Yes, I understand. I've already said that in an earlier post. I also understand at some point, after 3 trials, the prosecution might just give up trying to get a conviction that sticks.

Nah, that's the second worse case scenario. The worse case scenario is that the guy would go free.

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I have a hard time feeling sorry that a prosecutor might have to do a little extra work because he was so bad at his job that two previous convictions were overturned and he might have ended up with a hung jury because he doesn't know the law on evidence. Are you really arguing that running an increased risk of wrongful convictions is a good trade off?

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I get it that the more trials there are the more billable hours some lawyer is going to get. So the more hung juries there are, it's better for lawyers.

I'm not in favor of that.

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There are nearly zero criminal defense attorneys in the state of Louisiana that bill by the hour. Criminal defense representation fees are considered earned upon receipt, and therefore, practically every defense attorney charges a single lump fee for the entirety of representation, whether they arrange a pre-bill dismissal or whether it goes to trial.

In fact, unless there was a very specific rider in the contract, the defense attorney very well might be doing another trial for free.

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Are you really arguing that running an increased risk of wrongful convictions is a good trade off?

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It would not have been a wrongful conviction. The guy had a long history of burning people to death.

Are you "really arguing" that every unanimous conviction guarantees it is not a wrongful conviction?

If you're so convinced that more guilty votes are required, why don't you start a movement to have 20 jurors in criminal cases? Maybe 100 jurors! That would help keep innocent people from being convicted, right?

I don't want any innocent person to go to prison. I also don't want any guilty person to go free.

I believe, based on my experience, that a 10-2 verdict requirement in non-capital crime cases is a reasonable trade-off to achieve a correct and fair verdict.

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I have a hard time feeling sorry that a prosecutor might have to do a little extra work

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I'm not asking you to feel sorry for anyone. I'm simply saying time constraints of prosecutors might force them to wave the white flag on a case like the one I sat on so they can go on to other cases where they feel they have a better chance of winning.

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There are nearly zero criminal defense attorneys in the state of Louisiana that bill by the hour. Criminal defense representation fees are considered earned upon receipt, and therefore, practically every defense attorney charges a single lump fee for the entirety of representation, whether they arrange a pre-bill dismissal or whether it goes to trial.

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So if there are multiple trials, defense attorneys only charge a fee for one trial? Do court appointed defense attorneys only get paid for one trial even if they have to try multiple trails for the same case?

Yeah.......no.

And the more criminal trials there are the greater demand there is for court appointed defense attorneys. Who pays them? In one form or another, taxpayers end up paying them. So that's more billable (in one form or another of the term "billable") work for underemployed lawyers.

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I don't want any innocent person to go to prison. I also don't want any guilty person to go free.

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Impossible, and you know it. I'm genuinely surprised that you're so willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater on this one, all because of one jury you happened to sit on.

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I'm not asking you to feel sorry for anyone. I'm simply saying time constraints of prosecutors might force them to wave the white flag on a case like the one I sat on so they can go on to other cases where they feel they have a better chance of winning.

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Again, all based on one trial. One potential hung jury. What decent prosecutor would waive the white flag after one hung jury?

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So if there are multiple trials, defense attorneys only charge a fee for one trial? Do court appointed defense attorneys only get paid for one trial even if they have to try multiple trails for the same case?

Yeah.......no.

And the more criminal trials there are the greater demand there is for court appointed defense attorneys. Who pays them? In one form or another, taxpayers end up paying them. So that's more billable (in one form or another of the term "billable") work for underemployed lawyers.

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You would do much better asking questions before making assertions. I'll take each bit of misinformation in turn.

First, defense attorneys don't generally bill for individual stages in the process. The idea is that they should be doing what is best for the client instead of potentially dragging out the process to make more money. If they can leverage their knowledge and expertise into getting a pre-bill dismissal, why should that be worth less than taking something all the way to trial? So, the overwhelming majority of criminal defense attorneys charge one lump sum to handle a single criminal matter. And like I said, unless you put a very specific rider in your contract saying that your matter is deemed resolved after a single jury trial, that attorney is still going to be representing that individual under the previous contract.

Second, while I don't have perfect knowledge of every little hamlet in Louisiana, functionally all public defense work in the state of Louisiana is either full time salaried work or part time contract work. I'm not aware of a single jurisdiction that has a practice of farming out representation on a single case for single fee basis. If it exists, it constitutes such a small percentage of total public defense work as to approach irrelevancy.

I admitted my bias in the very first line of this thread, but it has absolutely nothing to do with a belief that it will make me, or any of my colleagues, more money