STATE v. THOMAS (2020)

Writ granted in part. Defendant's convictions were not final when Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U.S. ––––, 140 S.Ct. 1390, 206 L.Ed.2d 583 (2020), was decided, and therefore the holding of Ramos applies to any non-unanimous verdicts in these proceedings. See Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 328, 107 S.Ct. 708, 716, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987). The matter is remanded to the court of appeal for further proceedings and to conduct a new error patent review in light of Ramos v. Louisiana. The remand order does not pertain to defendant's conviction for attempted manslaughter, which was by unanimous verdict. The application is otherwise denied.

REMANDED

I concur in the disposition of the writ. I write separately to emphasize that the defendant is not without a potential remedy given the troubling statistics showing the clear exclusion of Black citizens of Assumption Parish from the jury pool. Mr. Thomas demonstrated that, of the list of 275 people on the prospective juror list for his trial, only 56 were served with a jury summons and 33 of those served lived in one town; Pierre Part, whose residents are over 95% White. Therefore, of the 56 people who were served with a jury summons, only three (5.4%) were Black. Yet 31% of registered voters in Assumption Parish are Black. Unsurprisingly, an all-White jury was then selected for this trial, in which the defendant, the victims, and the main witnesses were all Black.

Mr. Thomas's counsel did not file a motion to quash pursuant to La. C. Cr. P. art. 532, but did object to the composition of the venire and filed a motion for a new trial on the ground that the jury summons process systematically excluded Black potential jurors from the pool. A defense motion to quash is currently considered the proper vehicle for objecting to the venire and trial counsel should have known this. In my opinion, counsel performed deficiently by raising this potentially meritorious issue through the wrong procedure, thereby allowing its dismissal on technical grounds. The troubling disparity between the percentage of potentially eligible Black jurors in Assumption Parish and those who were summoned for jury duty implicates fundamental rights. Therefore this issue is now more appropriately raised in a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in collateral review.

PER CURIAM:

Johnson, C.J., concurs and assigns reasons.