Repairing the tarnished Soul of Louisiana – Yes on Two
29th October 2018 · 0 Comments
By Norris Henderson
Guest Columnist
When the jury came back in the courtroom with 10 jurors finding us guilty, but two who firmly believed we were not guilty, I whispered to my codefendant—my brother—“we are going home!” I was sorely wrong. I spent the next 27 years, 10 months and 18 days in Angola State Penitentiary for a crime I did not commit. My brother is still there.
I left that wretched plantation with a deep, lifelong commitment to help the many people suffering the injustices I witnessed first hand all those years. I founded Voice of the Experienced and we have worked tirelessly to bring reform to the worst carceral state on the planet.
We need you now!
It might come as a surprise to anyone who has watched “Law and Order” that a person can be convicted in Louisiana by a jury that can’t even agree that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
For the better part of this century, Louisiana lead the nation in incarceration, dropping to number two by a hair only last year. Louisiana is also among the worst states for wrongful convictions. Racism plays a sordid role in the criminal justice system. As activist and researcher Sam Sinyangwe said last year, “I thought I understood racism and mass incarceration, ut nothing prepared me for what I saw in Baton Rouge.”
Sinyangwe noted Louisiana had the “highest incarceration rate in the world” and, within that, “Black people are locked up at much higher rates.”
One of the reasons for Louisiana’s high incarceration rate and its wrongful conviction rate is that Louisiana is one of two states that allows for non-unanimous juries. The federal government and 48 other states require unanimous juries. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has made clear that the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution requires a unanimous jury. John Adams, one of our country’s founders said, “It’s the unanimity of a jury that preserves the rights of mankind.”
However, the United States Supreme Court has said that states don’t need to fully comply with this portion of the Sixth Amendment.
After the Civil War, a racist violent struggle pervaded Louisiana. It was the location of the Colfax Massacre of 1873 and the Coushatta Massacre of 1874. More than 3,000 freed slaves were killed between 1864 and 1877. Caddo Parish, which, as the Confederacy’s last stand, prided itself on refusing to surrender, referred to as Bloody Caddo, the genocidal killings reduced the African-American majority in the parish. In response to the Tilden-Hayes compromise, federal troops left Louisiana, and white Democrats took a stranglehold of power.
As a result, Louisiana’s non-unanimous jury system became embedded in the Louisiana Constitution of 1898 as part of a series of measures explicitly designed to “establish the supremacy of the white race in perpetuity. “Those in attendance of the 1898 Consti-tutional Convention specifically acknowledged that the 13th and 14th Amendments prohibited them from doing exactly what they wanted to do – which was enshrine white suffrage, protect white power and reinstitute slavery. So they undertook a system that they believed “no judges from Boston” would be able to overturn.
According to a non-partisan report by the Baton Rouge Advocate, the non-unanimous jury system continues to operate in a way that silences the voices of African-American jurors and prejudices African-American defendants. This has had a devastating impact on the community’s appreciation of the justice provided, revealing racial bias by prosecutors and undermining confidence in the justice system. When citizens have no confidence in the justice system – when they see it as a series of laws imposed upon them, rather than part of their own system of government – lawlessness ensues.
This year, there is a chance to change all that. In Spring 2018, the Louisiana Legislature overwhelmingly decided to let Louisiana voters decide: Do you support an amendment to require a unanimous jury verdict in all noncapital felony cases for offenses that are committed on or after January 1, 2019? On November 6, the citizens of Louisiana will have an opportunity to vote on this constitutional question. The ballot question is entirely non-partisan, as every major party has endorsed passage of the Constitutional Amendment.
John Legend traveled to Baton Rouge in 2017 to argue for criminal justice reform. He explained how giving humanity to all of Louisiana’s citizens – replacing a system of retribution for one with the capacity for rehabilitation and redemption – would repair the soul of our state. This August, he penned a column for the Washington Post about the ballot initiative currently in front of the Louisiana public:
We are at a crossroads, with an opportunity to right this long-standing wrong. This year, the Louisiana legislature is putting a question on the November ballot asking voters whether they support a constitutional amendment to require unanimous jury verdicts in all criminal cases starting next year. Come November, voters will have the opportunity to strike down the discriminatory rule and uphold justice for all.
The ballot question is entirely nonpartisan. The Louisiana Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties have all endorsed the passage of a constitutional amendment requiring jury votes to be unanimous…
It’s time to come together, reject prejudice in all its forms and build a future in which everyone is valued and supported. The 1898 constitutional convention was about denying voice to the expression of all of Louisiana’s citizens. This ballot question in November is about giving Louisiana her voice back
To this end, I have helped create and Chair the Unanimous Jury Coalition. Please join VOTE and a diverse coalition seeking to override this historic injustice. Get informed and get involved! For more information, check out www.UnanimousJuryCoalition.org.
This article originally published in the October 22, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
