On April 12, 2021, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed petitions on behalf of clients who were sentenced to Death By Incarceration by non-unanimous juries in Louisiana, where they remain in the Louisiana State Penitentiary colloquially known as “Angola,” despite the Supreme Court’s clear ruling that their convictions were unconstitutional. We joined more than 700 volunteer attorneys across the country in filing petitions in the cases of more than 1,000 people, mostly Black men, imprisoned in Louisiana from convictions by non-unanimous juries. They are known as “Jim Crow Juries” because they are a relic of the Jim Crow era that has systematically discounted the votes of jurors of color, led to a significant number of wrongful convictions, and helped maintain disproportionately high rates of incarceration of Black people in Louisiana. In this episode of the Activist Files, Angelo Guisado, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, speaks with Jamila Johnson, managing attorney for the Jim Crow Juries: Unanimous Jury Project at Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans, who coordinated the massive effort, about what comes next.
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