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Date: 11-22-2020
Case Style:
STATE OF LOUISIANA Vs. DARNELL BRAUD
Case Number: 2020-KA-0389
Judge: Roland L. Belsome
Court: COURT OF APPEAL
FOURTH CIRCUIT
STATE OF LOUISIANA
Plaintiff's Attorney: Irena Zajickova
Donna Andrieu
Assistant District Attorney
Leon Cannizzaro
District Attorney
Defendant's Attorney:
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Description:
New Orleans, LA - Criminal defense lawyer represented defendant Darnell Braud with appealing his three non-unanimous jury convictions for manslaughter, obstruction of justice, and illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Defendant was charged with three offenses by grand jury indictment: 1)
first-degree murder, 2) obstruction of justice in a first-degree murder investigation,
and 3) illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. At arraignment,
Defendant entered a plea of not guilty to the charges.
1
In Ramos, supra, the United States Supreme Court held that non-unanimous jury verdicts in
state felony trials are unconstitutional.
2
Following Ramos, the Louisiana Supreme Court in State v. Varnado, 20-0356, p. 1 (La. 6/3/20),
296 So.3d 1051, held that even if a defendant’s non-unanimous jury verdict claim was not
properly preserved for review at the time Ramos was decided, the reviewing court should
nonetheless include it in its error patent review. See also La. C.Cr.P. art. 920(2).
3
The factual background of this case is not pertinent to the determinative issue in this appeal.
2
Before trial, Defendant filed a motion to declare La. C.Cr.P. art. 782
unconstitutional and a request for jury instructions requiring a unanimous verdict,
which were denied by the trial court. After a four-day trial, the jury found
Defendant guilty of a lesser verdict of manslaughter as to the charge of first-degree
murder, and guilty as charged of obstruction of justice and illegal possession of a
firearm by a convicted felon. The record reflects that the jury reached a 10-2
verdict on each charge. Defendant’s motion for a mistrial on the non-unanimous
verdict issue was denied.
At sentencing, the trial court sentenced Defendant to serve forty years for the
manslaughter and obstruction of justice convictions, and twenty years for the
illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon conviction.
4
Subsequently, the
trial court found Defendant to be a second felony offender. As a result, the trial
court vacated Defendant’s previous sentence as to the manslaughter conviction and
re-sentenced him to serve seventy-five years, without benefits, to run consecutively
with the forty-year sentence for obstruction of justice. This appeal followed.5
DISCUSSION
In his sole assignment of error, Defendant argues that the lack of a
unanimous jury verdict violates his constitutional due process rights under the
Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. At the time
of the commission of the instant offenses, in November of 2017, Louisiana law
4
The trial court ordered the sentences for manslaughter and obstruction of justice to run
consecutively. All of the sentences were imposed without the benefit of parole, probation or
suspension of sentence.
5 Defendant was granted leave to file a pro se brief in this matter. As of the date of this opinion,
Defendant has not filed a pro se brief.
3
allowed for non-unanimous jury verdicts in felony trials. La. C.Cr.P. art. 782(A)
provided, in pertinent part, that “[c]ases in which punishment is necessarily
confinement at hard labor shall be tried by a jury composed of twelve jurors, ten of
whom must concur to render a verdict.” Act No. 493 of the 2018 Louisiana
Regular Legislative Session amended La. C.Cr.P. art. 782 to require a unanimous
jury verdict only in cases for an offense committed after January 1, 2019. Thus,
for offenses committed before January 1, 2019, only a 10-2 jury verdict was
necessary. In addition, at that time, the controlling Louisiana jurisprudence
consistently upheld the constitutionality of non-unanimous jury verdicts for cases
tried before a twelve-person jury. See State v. Bertrand, 08-2215, p. 6 (La.
3/17/09), 6 So.3d 738, 742 (upholding the constitutionality of La. C.Cr.P. art. 782).
While Defendant’s appeal was pending review in this Court, on April 20,
2020, the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in Ramos v.
Louisiana, announcing a new constitutional rule: the Sixth Amendment right to a
jury trial- as incorporated against the States through the Fourteenth Amendmentrequires a unanimous jury verdict to convict a defendant of a serious offense. Thus,
the United States Supreme Court ruled definitively that non-unanimous jury
verdicts in state felony trials are unconstitutional. In addition, Ramos invalidates
the non-unanimous convictions of defendants who preserved the issue for review
in cases still on direct review. Ramos, -- U.S. --, 140 S.Ct. at 1406-08; see also,
Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 328, 107 S.Ct. 708, 716, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987)
4
(“a new rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively
to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final”).6
In the instant case, Defendant preserved the non-unanimous jury verdict
issue, having raised it in his motion for a mistrial. Since the present matter was
pending on direct review when Ramos was decided, the holding of Ramos applies.
Accordingly, Defendant’s three convictions and correlating sentences must be
vacated.
7
Outcome: For these reasons, we hereby vacate Defendant’s convictions and sentences, and remand this matter to the trial court.
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
Comments: