Almost every year on July 9, Jennifer Lynn Logan turns to social media with a heartfelt prayer. She bows her head for her brother and his co-defendant – Mark Cambre –  but also for the victim’s family. 

Her annual posts read almost the same way each year. “Please pray for my brother, please pray for Mark, and please pray for all three families affected by this tragedy.”

In 2006, her brother Donald Logan was convicted of the second-degree murder of retired New Orleans police officer Kelly Marrione. 

She can never forget that a life was lost, Jennifer Logan says.

Still, she doesn’t agree with how her brother was convicted, with a non-unanimous jury that voted 11 to 1 to convict. At the time, Louisiana was one of the only states that allowed non-unanimous juries, which have since been found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. “It’s just not fair,” his sister said. “In 49 other states, this wouldn’t happen.”

A split-jury conviction wouldn’t stand anywhere else in the United States. 

Now, a bill making its way through the Louisiana State Senate is trying to correct the situation, which is unique to Louisiana. “Louisiana lawmakers now have an opportunity to finally address this history and to recognize the right of every Louisianan to a fair process in the legal system,” said Samatha Kennedy, executive director of the Promise of Justice Initiative. 

In the Senate bill sponsored by Sen. Royce Duplessis, those people with verdicts made with a 10-2 or 11-1 juries have a chance to move their cases back into court. They deserve their day in court, Kennedy said. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that “juries must agree on a person’s guilt to take their freedom away.”

That didn’t happen in Logan’s case. His dissenting juror remembers the trial well.

Juror didn’t vote to convict because the facts didn’t match the charge

In a phone conversation with The Lens last week, the dissenting juror in Logan’s case said that she doesn’t believe justice was done. The facts of the case didn’t merit a second-degree murder conviction, which requires intention to kill, she said. 

Logan’s attorney had argued self-defense in the shooting, which happened after he and Cambre unexpectedly ran into Marrione at a home-improvement store. A few months earlier, Marrione had promised to fix several traffic tickets for Cambre for $4,500, but failed to follow through. Cambre asked Logan to follow Marrione to figure out what had happened, the defense argued. Instead, the two men were met at the door by Marrione, who pulled out a gun, shooting Cambre twice, they said.  Fearing for their lives, they said, they returned fire, hitting Marrione three times. Ballistics show that none of the bullets from Logan’s gun hit the victim.

Prosecutors contended that Logan and Cambre had followed Marrione home to steal his Rolex watch and that the shooting was a botched armed robbery.

The dissenting juror found the defense argument more convincing. “(Logan) didn’t have the intent to go there and murder the guy,” she said. And she wasn’t alone in that view, she said. During the nearly six-hour deliberation, jurors went back to the judge repeatedly to ask for clarification, she said. “You can’t really, you know, convict a person for something that he didn’t do.”

As the hours passed, the judge had to bring out cushions for the benches to help ease the strain of the long hours. One of the jurors was dealing with gout, and special arrangements had to be made to accommodate his condition.

They were split between manslaughter and second-degree, she said. To reach consensus, other jurors – worn down by the lengthy deliberations – shifted their positions. “But I was like, ‘I’m not changing my vote,’” she said. On her juror slip, she voted Not Guilty and wrote in “manslaughter.”

She would vote the same today, if she were on that jury and heard the same testimony, she said. “The facts remain the same. The facts remain the same.”

‘Jim Crow juries’ meant to exclude the voices of Black jurors

In almost all states, a unanimous verdict, agreed upon by all 12 jurors, has long been required to convict someone in a criminal trial. For decades, Louisiana stood as an exception. 

Shortly after Louisiana allowed Black jurors to serve on juries, the state eliminated the requirement of unanimous juries, allowing jurors to reach a verdict without including the votes of Black jurors. For more than a century, the state permitted convictions even when the jury was not unanimous, setting it apart from national legal norms. 

Because of that racist history, split juries are often referred to as “Jim Crow juries,” designed to exclude the voices of Black jurors. Even in Donald Logan’s case, the intention became actuality. Though Logan is white, he had one Black member of his jury: his dissenting juror.

At that point, only Louisiana and Oregon were permitting non-unanimous juries. Then, in 2018, Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment that barred split juries in felony trials. But the reform was not made retroactive for the 1,500 people imprisoned for such convictions.

Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2020 decision Ramos v. Louisiana, ruled that non-unanimous jury verdicts were unconstitutional.  “Today, Louisiana’s and Oregon’s are fully – and rightly – relegated to the dustbin of history,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a partial concurring opinion.  

After the high court’s decision, the two states reacted differently to those who had already been convicted by split juries. Oregon’s state supreme court awarded new trials in its cases. Louisiana’s state supreme court refused to deal with retroactive cases. Some prisoners have made their way out on their own.

But even five years after the Ramos decision, Louisiana prisons still hold between 900 and 1,000 people who did not have 12 jurors vote to convict them. 

Senate bill has advanced, but faces more hurdles 

Logan has now served nearly 22 years of a life sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He became qualified as an auto mechanic. He learned graphic design, became an electrician, auto mechanic, and generator technician. He gained an IC3 digital-literacy certification. Lately, he’s been translating menus and other written materials into Braille, a skill he learned through an Angola class. 

His sister hopes that he could be granted a new trial – or become eligible for parole. “He has a stack foot-high of certificates and courses he completed and programs he’s done. He’s done everything possible to better himself,” his sister said. “I absolutely have 1000% faith that he will be an amazing and productive member of society.”

The Logan family and other family members are keeping an eye on the work of the Promise of Justice Initiative, which has continued to push for legislative reform. Until that’s addressed, Kennedy said, “Jim Crow juries cast an ongoing stain on our state’s legal system.”

But before it becomes law, the legislation must go through several additional steps.

A Senate committee advanced Duplessis’ legislation, Senate Bill 218, to the Senate. It could go to the Senate floor Wednesday. If passed in the Senate, it must be passed through a parallel process in the House and then signed by the governor.

Only if that happens will prisoners in Louisiana convicted with non-unanimous jury verdicts be able to seek post-conviction relief in court.