No. 13-1105
IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States
————
ORTIZ T. JACKSON,
Petitioner,
v.
LOUISIANA,
Respondent.
————
On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the
Louisiana Court of Appeal,
Fourth Circuit
————
BRIEF OF INNOCENCE PROJECT
NEW ORLEANS AS AMICUS CURIAE
IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER
————
EMILY MAW
Counsel of Record
INNOCENCE PROJECT NEW ORLEANS
4051 Ulloa Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
(504) 943-1902
emilym@ip-no.org
Counsel for Amicus Curiae
Innocence Project New Orleans
April 14, 2014
WILSON-EPES PRINTING CO., INC. – (202) 789-0096 – WASHINGTON, D. C. 20002

 i
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE……………………1
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT………………………….2
ARGUMENT………………………………………………4
I.

Cases of Exoneration in Louisiana………...4

II.

Cases of Exoneration in Louisiana in
Which Conviction Was by Non-Unanimous
Verdict………………………………………..11

III.

Non-unanimous juries have made incorrect
determinations that resulted in wrongful
convictions……………………………………13

CONCLUSION………………………………………….16

 ii
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page(s)
FEDERAL CASES
Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472 (2008)

14

STATE CASES
State v. Bridgewater, 823 So.2d 877 (La. 2002)

14

State v. Collier, 553 So.2d 815 (La. 1989)

15

State v. Goodley, 398 So.2d 1068 (La. 1981)

8

State v. Harris, 820 So.2d 471 (La. 2002)

14

State v. Jacobs, 789 So.2d 1280 (La. 2001)

14

State v. Lucky, 755 So.2d 845 (La. 1999)

14

State v. Myers, 761 So.2d 498 (La. 2000)

14

State v. Neal, 796 So.2d 649 (La. 2001)

14

State v. Seals, 684 So.2d 368 (La. 1996)

14

State v. Taylor, 781 So.2d 1205 (La. 2001)

14

State v. Dilosa, 529 So.2d 14 (La. App. 5 Cir. 1988)
12

 iii
State v. Durham, 673 So.2d 1103 (La. App. 5 Cir.
1996)
15
State v. Hayes, 806 So.2d 816 (La. App. 5 Cir. 2001)
15
State v. Meyers, 638 So.2d 1378 (La. App. 5 Cir. 1996)
13
State v. Beridon, Terrebonne Parish Case No. 78,042
6
State v. Bibbens, East Baton Rouge Parish Case No.
2-87-979
6
State v. Dan Bright, Orleans Parish Case No.
375-994

9

State v. Gregory Bright, Orleans Parish Case No.
252-514

6

State v. Brown, St. Tammany Parish Case No.
128-634

6

State v. Burge, St. Tammany Parish Case No.
147, 175

6

State v. Burrell, Union Parish Case No. 28,734

9

State v. Chapman, St. Tammany Parish Case No.
71,385
7
State v. Charles, Terrebonne Parish Case No.
106, 980
State v. Coco, Calcasieu Parish Case No.
14891-95

7

10

 iv

State v. Cousin, Orleans Parish Case No.
376-479

9

State v. Davis, Jefferson Parish Case No.
92-4541

7, 13

State v. Delmore, Jefferson Parish Case No.
92-4541
State v. Dilosa, Jefferson Parish Case No.
87-105

7

7, 12

State v. Ford, Caddo Parish Case No. 126,005

9

State v. Gibson, Orleans Parish Case No.
203-904

9

State v. Graham, Union Parish Case No. 28,734

9

State v. Hayes, Jefferson Parish Case No.
97-3780

7

State v. Hill, Orleans Parish Case No.
359-046

10

State v. Jackson, Jefferson Parish Case No.
87-205

7

State v. James, Jefferson Parish Case No.
81-4366

7

State v. Anthony Johnson, Washington Parish Case
No. 89-CRC-39701
7
State v. Craig Johnson, Orleans Parish Case No.
380-395

7

 v

State v. Rickey Johnson, Sabine Parish Case No.
30,770
7, 12
State v. Knapper, Orleans Parish Case No.
270-437

9

State v. Kyles, Orleans Parish Case No.
303-970

9

State v. Labran, Orleans Parish Case No.
388-287

9

State v. Matthews, Jefferson Parish Case No.
97-3780
State v. Meyers, Jefferson Parish Case No.
92-4541

10

7

State v. Thibodeaux, Jefferson Parish Case No.
96-4522

10

State v. Thompson, Orleans Parish Case No.
305-826

10

State v. Thompson, Orleans Parish Case No.
306-526

8

State v. Triplett, Orleans Parish Case No.
400-740

11

State v. Truvia, Orleans Parish Case No.
252-514

6

State v. Calvin Williams, Orleans Parish Case No.
259-071
10

 vi
State v. Hayes Williams, Orleans Parish Case No.
199-523
10
State v. Michael Anthony Williams, Jackson Parish
Case No. 20,387
7
State v. Michael Williams, Jefferson Parish Case No.
96-2599
10
State v. Willis, Caddo Parish Case No. 118,517

10

STATUTES
La. C. Cr. P. art. 782

11

La. Rev. Stat. § 15:169

8

La. Rev. Stat. § 15:572.8

4

OTHER AUTHORITIES
Samuel Gross, National Registry of Exonerations,
Exonerations in the United States: 1989-2012
8
National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations in
2013
5
National Registry of Exonerations Glossary

5

 1
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1
Amicus Innocence Project New Orleans
(hereinafter IPNO) is a non-profit law office that
provides free legal representation at the postconviction stage to life-sentenced prisoners in
Louisiana and Mississippi who have provable claims
of actual innocence. IPNO is dedicated to exonerating
wrongfully convicted people in cases where DNA
testing can provide conclusive proof of innocence as
well as in more difficult cases where DNA testing is
unavailable but where innocence may still be proven.
Since IPNO’s inception in 2001, our efforts have led
to the freedom or exoneration of 23 innocent
individuals who, combined, spent nearly 440 years
wrongly incarcerated for crimes they did not commit.
In addition to working to exonerate and free
the innocent, amicus uses its successes to advocate
for changes in laws and policies that contribute to
wrongful convictions. IPNO has a direct interest in
putting an end to non-unanimous jury verdicts of
guilt in Louisiana, which increase the likelihood of a
wrongful conviction and remove a crucial safeguard
against convicting innocent men and women in this
1 No counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part,
and no other person or entity other than amicus curiae has
made a monetary contribution to the preparation or submission
of this brief. Counsel of record for both parties received timely
notice of amicus’s intent to file this brief and both Petitioner
and Respondent have consented to the filing of this brief.
Pursuant to Rule 37.3(a), amicus has filed their consent letters
with the Clerk of Court.

 2
state. Therefore, IPNO respectfully files this amicus
curiae brief in support of Ortiz Jackson’s petition for
certiorari.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
Innocence Project New Orleans works to put
an end to wrongful convictions. Thus, amicus is
committed to assuring that the judicial process
functions in such a way that only the guilty are
convicted and the innocent are afforded every
available protection against being wrongfully
convicted. Louisiana’s allowance for non-unanimous
jury verdicts of guilt, even in cases where defendants
face life sentences without the possibility of parole,
removes a critical bulwark against wrongful
conviction that forty-eight other states in this
country provide. Simply put, non-unanimous jury
verdicts of guilt present an unacceptable risk of
convicting the innocent.
As is described below, amicus is familiar with
forty cases of exoneration/wrongful conviction in the
state of Louisiana.2 Thirteen of these wrongful
convictions involved capital charges, for which a
2 The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) counts forty-two
total exonerations/wrongful convictions in Louisiana. See
National Registry of Exonerations, List of Exonerations,
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/browse.as
px (last visited Apr. 11, 2014). Amicus is familiar with forty of
the cases identified by the NRE, and confines our analysis to
these cases because we do not have sufficient knowledge of the
record in the two additional cases cited by the NRE.

 3
unanimous verdict was required. Of the remaining
wrongful convictions, twenty were cases in which a
non-unanimous jury verdict was available. In
reviewing those cases, amicus has been able to
establish that at least nine of the guilty verdicts were
handed down by a non-unanimous jury. Eight of
those men were sentenced to life without the
possibility of parole. Altogether, these nine innocent
men spent a combined 131.5 years in prison on
account of verdicts handed down by a jury in which
not every member was convinced of their guilt.
Amicus’s role in the criminal justice system in
Louisiana is to free innocent prisoners. Based on our
thirteen years of experience and knowledge of the
Louisiana criminal justice system, it is our strong
opinion that the use of non-unanimous jury verdicts
in Louisiana has led to wrongful convictions in this
state and will continue to do so until such verdicts
are no longer allowed by law. The statistics described
below directly support this conclusion. For these
reasons, amicus Innocence Project New Orleans
submits this brief in support of Petitioner and urges
the Supreme Court to grant certiorari to review the
constitutionality of Louisiana’s continued use of nonunanimous jury verdicts to obtain convictions.

 4
ARGUMENT
I.

Cases of Exoneration in Louisiana

Amicus is familiar with forty cases3 prosecuted
in state courts in Louisiana that resulted in an
exoneration as defined by the National Registry of
Exonerations (hereinafter NRE).4 According to the
3 Amicus was counsel for successful collateral challenges to the
conviction in fourteen of these cases. In a further six cases,
amicus was counsel for the purposes of successfully obtaining
the exonerated person funds from the Louisiana Innocence
Compensation Funds. See La. R.S. § 15:572.8. Amicus is
familiar with the remaining twenty cases because in the course
of its operation, amicus collects and updates information from
court records on Louisiana exoneration cases in order to
maintain the central repository for information on exonerations
in Louisiana.
4

The NRE defines an exoneration as:
A person has been exonerated if
he or she was convicted of a
crime and later was either: (1)
declared to be factually innocent
by a government official or
agency with the authority to
make that declaration; or (2)
relieved of all the consequences
of the criminal conviction by a
government official or body with
the authority to take that action.
The official action may be: (i) a
complete pardon by a governor
or other competent authority,
whether or not the pardon is
designated
as
based
on
innocence; (ii) an acquittal of all
charges factually related to the

 5
NRE, Louisiana is second only to Illinois in its per
capita rate of exonerations.5 And, according to the
NRE, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, has the highest per
capita rate of exoneration of any county or parish in
the country.6 In fact, Orleans Parish’s rate of
exoneration per capita is over 40% higher than the
county with the second highest rate of exoneration
crime for which the person was
originally convicted; or (iii) a
dismissal of all charges related
to the crime for which the person
was originally convicted, by a
court or by a prosecutor with the
authority
to
enter
that
dismissal. The pardon, acquittal,
or dismissal must have been the
result, at least in part, of
evidence of innocence that either
(i) was not presented at the trial
at which the person was
convicted; or (ii) if the person
pled guilty, was not known to
the defendant, the defense
attorney and the court at the
time the plea was entered. The
evidence of innocence need not
be an explicit basis for the
official action that exonerated
the person.
National Registry of Exonerations,
Glossary, http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/
glossary.aspx (last visited Apr. 7, 2014).
5 National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations in 2013 at 20
(Feb. 4, 2014), http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration
/Documents/Exonerations_in_2013_Report.pdf.
6

Id. at 21.

 6
per capita in the country.7 Petitioner in this case was
convicted in Orleans Parish.
Of the forty prosecutions and convictions that
resulted in exoneration, twenty were tried in a
manner that allowed conviction by a non-unanimous
jury verdict. These twenty verdicts were in the
following cases (individuals with the same case
number were co-defendants):
1)

State v. Cheryl Beridon, Terrebonne Parish
Case No. 78,042;8

2)

State v. Gene Bibbens, East Baton Rouge
Parish Case No. 2-87-979;

3)

State v. Gregory Bright, Orleans Parish Case
No. 252-514;

4)

State v. Earl Truvia, Orleans Parish Case No.
252-514;

5)

State v. Dennis Brown, St. Tammany Parish
Case No. 128-634;

6)

State v. Gerald Burge, St. Tammany Parish
Case No. 147,175;

7

Id.

8 The case of Ms. Beridon is the only Louisiana case in which
exoneration was by executive action rather than a court
decision.

 7
7)

State v. Vernon Chapman, St. Tammany
Parish Case No. 71,385;

8)

State v. Clyde Charles, Terrebonne Parish
Case No. 106,980;

9)

State v. Glenn Davis, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 92-4541;

10)

State v. Larry Delmore, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 92-4541;

11)

State v. Terrence Meyers, Jefferson Parish
Case No. 92-4541;

12)

State v. Douglas Dilosa, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 87-105;

13)

State v. Travis Hayes, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 97-3780;

14)

State v. Willie Jackson, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 87-205;

15)

State v. Henry James, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 81-4366;

16)

State v. Anthony Johnson, Washington Parish
Case No. 89-CRC-39701;

17)

State v. Craig Johnson, Orleans Parish Case
No. 380-395;

18)

State v. Rickey Johnson, Sabine Parish Case
No. 30,770;

 8
19)

State v. John Thompson, Orleans Parish Case
No. 306-526;

20)

State v. Michael Anthony Williams, Jackson
Parish Case No. 20,387.

Of the remaining twenty cases, thirteen were tried as
first-degree murders so a non-unanimous verdict was
not permitted.9 See State v. Goodley, 398 So.2d 1068,
1071 (La. 1981). A disproportionate number of
Louisiana exonerations are in cases that were tried
as first-degree murders because post-conviction
counsel is provided to individuals who are sentenced
to death. La. R.S. § 15:169. In every exoneration
case, the defendant has required the assistance of
post-conviction counsel to obtain relief. Therefore,
the number of wrongly convicted people still in
prison who were convicted in cases where nonunanimous jury verdicts were permitted (and who do
not have the right to a state-appointed attorney
following direct appeal) is likely significantly higher
than those known and listed.10

9 Louisiana law was amended by Act 125 of 2007 which made
non-unanimous verdicts permissible in cases in which the
charge was first-degree murder, but the prosecution did not
seek the death penalty. All cases discussed in this brief were
prosecuted before this amendment was passed.
10 See Samuel Gross, National Registry of Exonerations,
Exonerations in the United States: 1989-2012 at 16 n. 26 (June
2012), http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Document
s/exonerations_us_1989_2012_full_report.pdf
(noting
that
although death sentences comprise a very small percentage of

 9
The thirteen verdicts in cases tried as firstdegree murders were in the following cases
(individuals with the same case number were codefendants):
1)

State v. Dan Bright, Orleans Parish Case No.
375-994;

2)

State v. Albert Burrell, Union Parish Case No.
28,734;

3)

State v. Michael Graham, Union Parish Case
No. 28,734;

4)

State v. Shareef Cousin, Orleans Parish Case
No. 376-479;

5)

State v. Glenn Ford, Caddo Parish Case No.
126,005;

6)

State v. Roland Gibson, Orleans Parish Case
No. 203-904;

7)

State v. Isaac Knapper, Orleans Parish Case
No. 270-437;

8)

State v. Curtis Kyles, Orleans Parish Case No.
303-970;

9)

State v. Dwight Labran, Orleans Parish Case
No. 388-287;

all prison sentences in the U.S., they form a disproportionately
high percentage of known exonerations).

 10
10)

State v. Ryan Matthews, Jefferson Parish Case
No. 97-3780;

11)

State v. Damon Thibodeaux, Jefferson Parish
Case No. 96-4522;

12)

State v. John Thompson, Orleans Parish Case
No. 305-826;

13)

State v. Calvin Williams, Orleans Parish Case
No. 259-071.

Of the remaining seven cases, four were tried by a
judge sitting without a jury. These four exoneration
cases were:
1)

State v. Allen Coco, Calcasieu Parish Case No.
14891-95;

2)

State v. Darrin Hill, Orleans Parish Case No.
359-046;

3)

State v. Calvin Willis, Caddo Parish Case No.
118,517;

4)

State v. Michael Williams, Jefferson Parish
Case No. 96-2599.

In two cases, the defendant pled guilty. These
exoneration cases were:

 11
1)

State v. David Lazzell, Iberia Parish Case No.
Unknown;11

2)

State v. Hayes Williams, Orleans Parish Case
No. 199-523.

And in the final case, the defendant was tried by a
six-person jury, which requires a unanimous verdict.
See La. C. Cr. P. art. 782. This exoneration case was:
1)

State v. Eddie Triplett, Orleans Parish Case
No. 400-740.

Therefore, there is a pool of twenty exoneration cases
in Louisiana in which a non-unanimous verdict was
possible at trial.
II.

Cases of Exoneration in Louisiana in
Which
Conviction
Was
by
NonUnanimous Verdict

As stated above, amicus has identified twenty
cases in which a jury was able to return a nonunanimous guilty verdict and a guilty verdict was
later followed by an exoneration. In at least nine of
these twenty cases, the guilty verdict was returned
by a non-unanimous jury. These nine cases are
nearly half of the identified exonerations in which a
non-unanimous verdict was possible.
11 See National Registry of Exonerations, Exoneree Profile:
David Lazzell, http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration
/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4078 (last visited Apr. 11, 2014).

 12
The nine wrongfully convicted individuals who
received these non-unanimous verdicts were Gene
Bibbens, Gerald Burge, Glenn Davis, Larry Delmore,
Terrence Meyers, Douglas Dilosa,12 Travis Hayes,
Willie Jackson, and Rickey Johnson.13 These
individuals served a total of 131.5 years imprisoned
at hard labor. These nine verdicts and the 131.5
years of wrongful incarceration served by the men
who received them were a direct result of Louisiana’s
law allowing juries to convict without reaching
unanimous decisions.

12 After reviewing the jury polling slips, the judge at Mr.
Dilosa’s trial stated that “a sufficient number of jurors have
voted yes that this was their verdict,” which implies the vote
was not unanimous. State v. Dilosa, Jefferson Parish Case No.
87-105 at 185 (July 21, 1985) (transcript). The polling slips
themselves are not available for inspection. A later appellate
court that did not have the polling slips—in an opinion in which
the issue was not material—described the verdict as unanimous
in the procedural history. State v. Dilosa, 529 So.2d 14, 16 (La.
App. 5 Cir. 1988). In subsequent proceedings in which he
obtained relief, Mr. Dilosa disputed this description of the
record. Dilosa v. Cain, E.D. La. Case No. 2:98-cv-03297 at 31
(Dec. 7, 1998) (petition). Based on the totality of the available
evidence on this point, amicus believes the verdict was not
unanimous in this case.

The record in Mr. Johnson’s case is ambiguous: the State and
the defense waived jury polling, and the court only asked the
foreman whether ten members of the jury concurred in the
verdict, to which the foreman responded in the affirmative. See
State v. Johnson, Sabine Parish Case No. 30,770 at 546
(transcript). Mr. Johnson, who was present in court at the time,
has since stated that the verdict was a non-unanimous 10-2
verdict.

13

 13
III.

Non-unanimous
juries
have
made
incorrect determinations that resulted in
wrongful convictions.

Closer examination of some of the cases in
which juries handed down non-unanimous guilty
verdicts illustrates how allowing such verdicts can
diminish the jury’s role as a safeguard against
wrongful conviction. Glenn Davis, Larry Delmore,
and Terrence Meyers were convicted based on the
testimony of a single eyewitness who testified he saw
the three men perpetrate a drive-by shooting. State
v. Meyers, 638 So.2d 1378, 1381 (La. App. 5 Cir.
1996). The witness admitted smoking crack about an
hour before the crime. Id. Ten of the jurors found the
witness credible beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas
two did not. Because Louisiana allows nonunanimous guilty verdicts, the views of these two
jurors were discounted and the three men were
convicted.
Evidence discovered after trial demonstrates
that the two jurors were right to have doubts.
Several witnesses testified that the State’s crucial
eyewitness was not at the crime scene when the
shooting occurred. State v. Davis, Jefferson Parish
Case No. 92-4541 at 5 (Feb. 16, 2007) (opinion).
Additional evidence identified another individual as
the perpetrator. Id. This led to all three defendants’
convictions being vacated and the State dropping
charges.

 14
This case also illustrates how non-unanimous
verdicts allow the views of minorities to be
sidelined.14 Mr. Davis, Mr. Delmore, and Mr. Meyers
were tried in Jefferson Parish, where there is a long
history of underrepresentation of African Americans
on juries.15 In this case three African-American
14 Amicus is unable to present complete data on this point
because in many cases the races of the jurors is not discernible
from the record or the jury was not polled and so it is not
apparent which jurors’ views were nullified.
15 See Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472 (2008) (finding Batson
violation and noting “implausibility” of reasons offered by
Jefferson Parish prosecutor for striking African-American
jurors); State v. Harris, 820 So.2d 471, 474 (La. 2002) (finding
Batson violation where Jefferson Parish prosecutor explained
that she was striking an African-American juror because he
was a “single black male on the panel with no children . . . . I
don't want him relating to the defendant more so than he would
the State’s part of the case”); State v. Jacobs, 789 So.2d 1280
(La. 2001) (though reversing on other grounds, court rebuked
the judge for the careless manner in which the judge considered
the defendant’s Batson challenges); State v. Myers, 761 So.2d
498 (La. 2000) (reversing on grounds the trial court erred in
failing to address the defendant’s Batson challenges to the
State’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude six of seven
African Americans). See also State v. Bridgewater, 823 So.2d
877 (La. 2002) (all-white jury seated after prosecutor used
peremptory strikes to remove prospective black jurors); State v.
Neal, 796 So.2d 649 (La. 2001) (prosecutor used strikes to
remove three African Americans; one African American seated
on jury); State v. Taylor, 781 So.2d 1205 (La. 2001) (prosecutor
struck five African Americans, leaving one on jury); State v.
Lucky, 755 So.2d 845 (La. 1999) (entire panel of jurors struck
when juror accused prosecutor of using challenges to remove
African-American women; resulting jury consisted of eleven
whites and one black) (information regarding jury composition
obtained from post-conviction investigator); State v. Seals, 684
So.2d 368 (La. 1996) (all-white jury seated after the prosecutor
struck three African Americans over defendant’s Batson

 15
jurors were seated. Nevertheless, two of these
African-American jurors had their votes nullified.
These two jurors did not vote to convict, but the jury
was able to return a guilty verdict regardless. In the
case of a particularly obvious Batson violation, the
Louisiana Supreme Court once observed:
Because only ten votes
were needed to convict
defendant
of
armed
robbery, the prosecutor
could
have
assumed,
contrary
to
Batson’s
admonition that it was
unacceptable to do so, that
all black jurors would vote
on the basis of racial bias
and
then
purposefully
discriminated by limiting
the number of blacks on
the jury to two.
State v. Collier, 553 So.2d 815, 819-20 (La. 1989).
In another exoneration case, Travis Hayes was
charged with being the getaway driver for a person
who murdered a store owner. State v. Hayes, 806
So.2d 816, 820-21 (La. App. 5 Cir. 2001). At trial the
jury heard that, after around six hours of through
the night interrogation, Mr. Hayes had accepted the
objection); State v. Durham, 673 So.2d 1103 (La. App. 5 Cir.
1996) (same).

 16
police’s accusation that his friend Ryan Matthews
was the murderer and he was the getaway driver. Id.
Additionally, two witnesses to the aftermath of the
crime identified Travis Hayes’s car. Id. at 820. The
defense’s main evidence was that DNA from the ski
mask left at the scene by the perpetrator did not
match Travis Hayes or Ryan Matthews. Id. at 822.
Ten jurors weighed this evidence and were certain of
Mr. Hayes’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Two
jurors, including the sole African American on the
jury, did not accept this and did not vote to convict.
These two jurors’ opinions were nullified.
After the verdict, evidence came to light that
proved the two dissenting jurors were correct. Most
significantly, the unaccounted for DNA from the
perpetrator’s ski mask was matched to an individual
who had no connection to Travis Hayes (or Ryan
Matthews) and who had been bragging about
perpetrating the crime.16 As a result, Mr. Hayes’s
conviction was vacated and the State dropped
charges.
CONCLUSION
Louisiana has the second highest per capita
rate of proven wrongful conviction in the country. An
alarming number of wrongful convictions have

Innocence Project New Orleans, Exoneree Profile: Travis
Hayes, http://www.ip-no.org/exonoree-profile/travis-hayes (last
visited Apr. 8, 2014).
16

 17
occurred in this state, and there are almost certainly
more to be discovered. The exoneration cases
described above and the fact that non-unanimous
guilty verdicts led to at least nine wrongful
convictions in Louisiana where such a verdict was
available illustrate that the continued use of nonunanimous verdicts presents a high risk of wrongful
conviction and has directly contributed to wrongful
convictions in Louisiana in the past. In each of these
nine identified cases, at least one member of the jury
had serious doubts about the defendant’s guilt. The
exonerations of these nine individuals show that
those jury members were right to be suspicious of the
State’s case.
There are various causes that contribute to
wrongful convictions across the country: eyewitness
misidentification, false confessions, flawed forensic
testimony, and others. These issues plague the
criminal justice system, and are hard to cure. In
Louisiana (and Oregon), however, innocent
defendants faced with criminal charges have yet
another obstacle to overcome: the possibility that a
non-unanimous jury can convict them of a crime they
did not commit. While the requirement of the other
forty-eight states that a guilty verdict come from a
unanimous jury does not provide failsafe protection
against convicting the innocent, removing it
eliminates the most significant protection afforded a
citizen facing the loss of his liberty.

 18
Louisiana and Oregon are the only two states
in the union that continue to permit non-unanimous
jury verdicts. Non-unanimous jury verdicts have
been shown to be a cause of wrongful convictions.
Where problems like eyewitness misidentification
may be difficult to remedy, this problem is much less
so: the practice should be and can be discontinued. In
sum, amicus Innocence Project New Orleans
supports Ortiz Jackson’s petition for certiorari. The
issue presented is an important one: disallowing the
continued use of non-unanimous jury verdicts in this
state will likely prevent innocent men and women
from losing their freedom in the future. For all the
foregoing reasons, and for those presented by
Petitioner, Mr. Jackson’s petition for certiorari
should be granted.
Respectfully Submitted,
INNOCENCE PROJECT
NEW ORLEANS

EMILY MAW
Counsel of Record
INNOCENCE PROJECT NEW
ORLEANS
4051 Ulloa Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
(504) 943-1902
emilym@ip-no.org

Counsel for Amicus Curiae
Innocence
Project
New
Orleans