Jim Crow Juries: Unanimous Jury Project
The purpose of this project is to match currently incarcerated individuals convicted by non-unanimous juries with pro bono lawyers to co-counsel with Promise of Justice Initiative and assist clients in completing post-conviction relief applications associated writ applications. Having counsel to support these filings greatly increases the chances of success, and this project will help to ensure that those convicted by 10-2 or 11-1 ‘split juries’ who are without resources to afford legal representation have access to potential relief.
For more than 138 years, Louisiana courts convicted people for felony crimes even when not all jurors believed that the prosecution had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. As a result, the State of Louisiana has sent thousands of men and women to prison for tens of thousands of years with inexcusably short deliberation times. Only Oregon and Louisiana convicted people of felony crimes with non-unanimous juries, and only in Louisiana could a judge sentence someone to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) when a jury did not reach a unanimous verdict.
Through this project, we will research individuals convicted by a non-unanimous jury who are interested in receiving assistance and are not represented by a lawyer. We will match those individuals with pro bono attorneys to assist them in completing their appeals. And throughout the process, PJI we will provide resources and support to the pro bono attorneys and teams. We will also track the outcomes of post-conviction relief applications submitted through this project.
Jim Crow Juries: Unanimous Jury Project is a project of the Promise of Justice Initiative, undertaken in collaboration with individual attorneys and firms offering pro bono representation.
Steps to get started.
- Setup your account and login. (If you have an account for the NACDL website, you can use that.)
- After you login, review the training materials which will appear below.
- Complete and agree to the volunteer questionnaire.