Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 14

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

never definitively ruled on the propriety of nonunanimous
juries  under  the  Sixth  Amendment—and  that  we  should 
use this case to hold for the first time that nonunanimous 
juries are permissible in state and federal courts alike. 

III 
Louisiana’s approach may not be quite as tough as trying
to  defend  Justice  Powell’s  dual-track  theory  of  incorpora-
tion, but it’s pretty close.  How does the State deal with the 
fact  this  Court  has  said  13  times  over  120  years  that  the 
Sixth Amendment does require unanimity?  Or the fact that 
five Justices in Apodaca said the same?  The best the State 
can  offer  is  to  suggest  that  all  these  statements  came  in
dicta.38  But even supposing (without granting) that Louisi-
ana is right and it’s dicta all the way down, why would the 
Court  now  walk  away  from  many  of  its  own  statements 
about  the  Constitution’s  meaning?    And  what  about  the 
prior  400  years  of  English  and  American  cases  requiring
unanimity—should we dismiss all those as dicta too?

Sensibly, Louisiana doesn’t dispute that the common law
required  unanimity.  Instead,  it  argues  that  the  drafting
history  of  the  Sixth  Amendment  reveals  an  intent  by  the 
framers to leave this particular feature behind.  The State 
points  to  the  fact  that  Madison’s  proposal  for  the  Sixth 
Amendment  originally  read:    “The  trial  of  all  crimes  . . . 
shall be by an impartial jury of freeholders of the vicinage,
with the requisite of unanimity for conviction, of the right 

—————— 

38 In at least some of these cases, that may be a fair characterization. 
For example, while Thompson was quick to say that the U. S. Constitu-
tion  requires  “the  unanimous  verdict  of  a  jury  of  twelve  persons,”  the
question before the Court was whether, in the circumstances of the de-
fendant’s case, a trial by eight jurors in a Utah state court would violate
the  Ex  Post  Facto  Clause.  170  U. S.,  at 351.    The  Sixth  Amendment’s 
unanimity requirement was unnecessary to the outcome, and the Utah 
Constitution required unanimity either way.  Id., at 345.