Book leads attorney on quest to end non-unanimous verdicts

When Ed Tarpley read "Jim Crow's Last Stand: Non-unanimous Criminal Jury Verdicts in Louisiana" three years ago, he couldn't let it go.

The book, by historian Thomas Aiello, details how and why a law allows Louisiana juries to convict defendants of felonies, including murder, by a 10-2 vote.

"After I read the book, I became convinced that this was a law that Louisiana had to repeal, that this was important, and we needed to do something about this," he said. "So I just made a commitment, right then, to make it a life goal to get rid of the non-unanimous jury verdict law in Louisiana."

He's been spreading the word about the law and its origins since. He's traveled across the state and has been interviewed by local, state and national media about the effort.

It'll be up to voters to decide on Nov. 6. Tarpley thinks Amendment 2 has solid, bipartisan support and that it will pass.

Tarpley is a former Grant Parish district attorney who also has worked as a defense attorney. He's gotten convictions with non-unanimous juries and had a client convicted by one. But he never knew its origin.

"That was simply unknown to me and, I think, 99 percent of the people in Louisiana. It was a fact that had been lost to history."

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It was passed in 1880, then added to the state constitution in 1898, a way to keep blacks serving on juries from blocking the criminal convictions of black defendants on trial. When Louisiana held its constitutional convention in 1973, Alexandria's Chris Roy Sr. led a push to repeal it, said Tarpley.

It was unsuccessful, but it did lead to a change from 9-3 to 10-2 verdicts. He said Aeillo's book is the first to tell the entire story of how the law came to be.

Tarpley said most people he's talked to in his travels already believe Louisiana requires unanimous jury verdicts, something he blames on fictional television shows like "Law & Order." 

"All the crime shows, all the law shows, the verdicts are unanimous," he said. "So most people are under the mistaken impression that Louisiana already has unanimous jury verdicts. They simply don't know."

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Tarpley told the tale of a man in Shreveport who spoke out at one of his events. The man had served on a jury during a rape trial, but he was one of three jurors convinced the defendant was not guilty. He held to what he believed, but one juror said that he needed to get home.

That man switched his vote, making it a 10-2 verdict to convict.

He said it's haunted him for 20 years, that an innocent person went to jail.

Tarpley noted that Louisiana and Illinois lead the nation in prisoner exonerations. Almost half of the exonerations in Louisiana have come from non-unanimous jury verdicts, he said.

"That's data we know. We can verify that," he said. 

Born out of racism, the law still discriminates against everybody who finds themselves defendants, he said. Tarpley said it goes against the ideals held by the country's founders and means that Louisiana residents don't have full protection under the U.S. Constitution.

"At its core, it's about liberty."

If a verdict is not unanimous, Tarpley said, the case has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. He pointed to a 1786 quote by founder and President John Adams, one he called "the greatest quote on this whole issue."

The quote reads, "It's the unanimity of the jury that preserves the rights of mankind."

"I have used that quote all over the state," said Tarpley.

He also contends that non-unanimous verdicts are "outside the mainstream of American legal tradition."

Tarpley called it an aberration, a watered-down version of the right to a trial by jury guaranteed by the 6th Amendment. 

He believes, should the amendment pass, it will change the way cases are handled. But he said Louisiana prosecutors are just as competent as those in Texas and Mississippi, and those states haven't had trouble filling their jails.

Weak cases won't be prosecuted, he said, and likely will be resolved in other ways.

"The public has to be assured that the criminal justice system is fair," he said. "And the non-unanimous jury verdict system is not fair. It's not."