Ramos v. Louisiana

Ramos v. Louisiana
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 7, 2019 Decided April 20, 2020
Full case name	Evangelisto Ramos, Petitioner v. Louisiana
Docket no.	18-5924
Citations	590 U.S. ___ (more) 140 S. Ct. 1390, 206 L.Ed.2d 583
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Defendant convicted of second-degree murder based on 10-to-2 jury verdict, sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Affirmed, State v. Ramos, 231 So. 3d 44 (La. Ct. App. 2017); writs denied, 257 So. 3d 679, 253 So. 3d 1300 (La. 2018). Cert. granted, 139 S. Ct. 1318 (2019).
Questions presented
Whether the Fourteenth Amendment fully incorporates the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a unanimous verdict.
Holding
The Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial—as incorporated against the States by way of the Fourteenth Amendment—requires a unanimous verdict to convict a defendant of a serious offense. Louisiana Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh
Case opinions
Majority	Gorsuch (Parts I, II–A, III, and IV–B–1), joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh
Plurality	Gorsuch (Parts II–B, IV–B–2, and V), joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor
Plurality	Gorsuch (Part IV–A), joined by Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence	Sotomayor (all but Part IV–A)
Concurrence	Kavanaugh (in part)
Concurrence	Thomas (in judgment)
Dissent	Alito, joined by Roberts; Kagan (all but Part III–D)
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. VI, XIV
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
Apodaca v. Oregon (1972) (plurality opinion), Johnson v. Louisiana (1972) (Powell, J., concurring)

Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that guilty verdicts be unanimous in trials for serious crimes. Only cases in Oregon and Louisiana were affected by the ruling because every other state already had this requirement. The decision incorporated the Sixth Amendment requirement for unanimous jury criminal convictions against the states, and thereby overturned the Court's previous decision from the 1972 cases Apodaca v. Oregon^[1][2] and Johnson v. Louisiana.^[3]