Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 10

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

7 

Opinion of the Court 

includes a requirement “that the verdict should be unani-
mous.”21  In  all,  this  Court  has  commented  on  the  Sixth 
Amendment’s  unanimity  requirement  no  fewer  than  13
times over more than 120 years.22 

There  can  be  no  question  either  that  the  Sixth  Amend-
ment’s unanimity requirement applies to state and federal 
criminal trials equally.  This Court has long explained that 
the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial is “fundamental
to the American scheme of justice” and incorporated against 
the States under the Fourteenth Amendment.23  This Court 
has long explained, too, that incorporated provisions of the 
Bill of Rights bear the same content when asserted against 
States as they do when asserted against the federal govern-
ment.24  So if the Sixth  Amendment’s right to a jury trial
requires a unanimous verdict to support a conviction in fed-
eral court, it requires no less in state court. 

II 
A 
How, despite these seemingly straightforward principles,
have Louisiana’s and Oregon’s laws managed to hang on for 
so long?  It turns out that the Sixth Amendment’s otherwise 
simple  story  took  a  strange  turn  in  1972.  That  year,  the
Court confronted these States’ unconventional schemes for 

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21 Ibid.   See  also  Andres  v.  United  States,  333  U. S.  740,  748  (1948) 
(“Unanimity  in  jury  verdicts  is  required  where  the  Sixth  and  Seventh 
Amendments apply”). 

22 In addition to Thompson, Maxwell, Patton, and Andres, see Johnson 
v. Louisiana, 406 U. S. 356, 369 (1972) (Powell, J., concurring); United 
States v. Gaudin, 515 U. S. 506, 510 (1995); Richardson v. United States, 
526  U. S.  813,  817  (1999);  Apprendi  v.  New  Jersey,  530  U. S.  466,  477 
(2000); Southern Union Co. v. United States, 567 U. S. 343, 356 (2012); 
Blakely v. Washington, 542 U. S. 296, 301–302 (2004); United States v. 
Booker, 543 U. S. 220, 233–239 (2005); Descamps v. United States, 570 
U. S. 254, 269 (2013); United States v. Haymond, 588 U. S. ___, ___–___ 
(2019) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 6–7). 

23 Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 148–150 (1968). 
24 Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 10–11 (1964).