House Bill 271 seeks to restore justice to people convicted by Jim Crow Juries
BATON ROUGE – Today Representative Jason Hughes filed HB 271 - a bill that seeks to heal the injuries caused by non-unanimous jury verdicts to the people of the State of Louisiana.
Non-unanimous jury verdicts--also known as Jim Crow jury verdicts--come from the 1800s, when Louisiana lawmakers sought to silence the voices of Black jurors and convict more Black people. Jim Crow jury verdicts allowed people to be convicted even when one or two jurors thought the State had failed to prove a person to be guilty of a crime.
“Jim Crow jury verdicts are a stain on our judicial system,” Jamila Johnson, Deputy Director at Promise of Justice Initiative said. “There have been a lot of suggestions for ways to appear responsive to this systemically racist practice. We applaud Representative Hughes for filing a bill that gives the injuries more than lip service and truly seeks to correct a wrong.”
Nearly 65% of the electorate voted to end the practice of non-unanimous jury verdicts prospectively in 2018. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that the practice had always been unconstitutional and rooted in Jim Crow. That ruling vacated the convictions of less than 100 people and stopped people from being tried with non-unanimous juries before the ballot measure took effect. Around 1,500 people remain in prison today despite never having been constitutionally convicted of a crime.
More than 1,000 cases are pending in Louisiana’s court seeking to establish the remedy this legislation would provide.
“The systemically racist practice of Jim Crow juries has shaped our past, but it must not continue to cast a shadow over our future.” Hardell Ward, managing attorney with Jim Crow Jury project at Promise of Justice Initiative.
CONTACT: Jamila Johnson, 504-529-5955, jjohnson@defendla.org