Amendment VI wrote:In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Notice how nowhere in this amendment is the language "fair trial" actually used. Instead, the 6th Amendment gives us some criteria of what a fair trial looks like. Namely, it has to be speedy and public, the jury can't be biased and has to be composed of locals, you get to be told what you're being charged with, you get to confront your accusers and evidence against you, you can compel evidence in your favor, and you have a right to legal counsel.
Hundreds of years of legal precedent and general consensus has established that the 6th Amendment provides a right to a fair trial. However, "fair trial" has to be limited pretty strictly to these criteria. As you can imagine, there's quite a few edge cases that can arise.
One of those is heading to the Supreme Court. Specifically, the policy that some states have held (and one state still holds) that certain felony convictions don't require a unanimous agreement by the jury as to the result.
For those of you unaware of how legal proceedings work, in 49 states and the Federal courts if the jury is unable to come to a unanimous conclusion on a verdict (be it in favor of conviction or in favor of acquittal) then the trial results in a hung jury, which generally leads to a mistrial.
In Oregan, though, you can be convicted of a felony and sent to life in prison if only 10 out of 12 jurors decide you are guilty. This actually happened recently (the defendant was actually sentenced to 12½ years, not life, but the point stands).
There have been accusations that the 2-dissent-rule is racially charged (about 85% of Oregon is white; the KKK was very involved with Oregon politics when the law was passed, etc.). However, some legal experts say that overturning the rule and re-examining convicts who were convicted with dissenting juries would be a diaster for the state's legal system and cause trauma to both victims (who have seen those who did them wrong sent away to prison, only to face the possibility of them being out on the street again) and criminals, who may have to undergo a retrial only to be convicted again. And it's unclear if this would even be possible, or if the law changing would just hold a ton of people to a different standard than those already in prison.
And then there's the question of whether or not the law is actually unconstitutional. The legal argument against it has to prove, essentially, that a law which allows a jury to convict nonunanimously is unconsitutional because it violates the right to an impartial jury. It isn't immediately obvious that this is true — it's likely that legal arguments will closely examine how nonunanimous juries have actually played out in U.S. courts.
So NSG, what do you think? Should states be allowed to pass laws allowing felony convictions that aren't unanimous? What really is an unbiased jury? And should the Supreme Court try to read between the lines of the 6th Amendment and define a right to a general 'fair trial' that isn't explicitly on the page?
