Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 46

12 

RAMOS v. LOUISIANA 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part 

Second,  Apodaca  causes  significant  negative  conse-
quences.  It is true that Apodaca is workable.  But Apodaca
sanctions  the  conviction  at  trial  or  by  guilty  plea  of  some 
defendants  who  might  not  be  convicted  under  the  proper 
constitutional rule (although exactly how many is of course
unknowable).  That consequence has traditionally supplied 
some support for overruling an egregiously wrong criminal-
procedure precedent.  See generally Malloy, 378 U. S. 1. 

In  addition,  and  significant  to  my  analysis  of  this  case, 
the  origins  and  effects  of  the  non-unanimous  jury  rule
strongly support overruling Apodaca.  Louisiana achieved 
statehood in 1812.  And throughout most of the 1800s, the 
State required unanimous juries in criminal cases.  But at 
its  1898  state  constitutional  convention,  Louisiana  en-
shrined  non-unanimous  juries  into  the  state  constitution.
Why the change?  The State wanted to diminish the influ-
ence of black jurors, who had won the right to serve on ju-
ries through the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and the
Civil Rights Act of 1875.  See Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 
U. S. 303, 308–310 (1880); T. Aiello, Jim Crow’s Last Stand:
Nonunanimous Criminal Jury Verdicts in Louisiana 16, 19
(2015).  Coming on the heels of the State’s 1896 victory in 
Plessy  v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537,  the 1898 constitutional 
convention expressly sought to “establish the supremacy of
the white race.”  Semmes, Chairman of the Committee on 
the Judiciary, Address at the Louisiana Constitutional Con-
vention in 1898, in Official Journal of the Proceedings of the
Constitutional  Convention  of  the  State  of  Louisiana  375 
(H. Hearsey ed. 1898).  And the convention approved non-
unanimous juries as one pillar of a comprehensive and bru-
tal program of racist Jim Crow measures against African-
Americans, especially in voting and jury service.  See Aiello, 
—————— 
until it is overruled by this Court.  As I read the Court’s various opinions 
today,  six  Justices  treat  the  result  in  Apodaca  as  a  precedent  for  pur-
poses of stare decisis analysis.  A different group of six Justices concludes 
that Apodaca should be and is overruled.