Supreme Court Weighs Whether All Non-Unanimous Jury Verdicts Are Unconstitutional
In April the justices said future split verdicts in criminal trials are unconstitutional. Now the question is what about such verdicts in the past — potentially several thousand of them.
Is a non-unanimous jury verdict in a criminal case ever constitutional?
Just months ago, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that such verdicts violate the Sixth Amendment's right to a jury trial. But the 6-3 decision applied only to future cases. The justices, apparently divided at the time over whether the decision should apply to past cases, left that question for another day.
On Wednesday that day arrived, as the justices debated whether last April's
