O’Melveny Wins Acquittal for Man Originally Convicted Under a Jim Crow-Era Policy Allowing For Non-Unanimous Jury Verdicts

A Louisiana man who served more than eight years in prison for a second-degree murder conviction was acquitted in a retrial led by attorneys from O’Melveny, which had taken his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Evangelisto Ramos was sentenced to life without parole in 2016 after 10 of 12 New Orleans jurors found him guilty in a 2014 stabbing. At the time, Louisiana and Oregon were the only states that allowed felony convictions by non-unanimous juries.

O’Melveny appealed Ramos’s conviction, arguing before the Supreme Court in 2019 that the Sixth Amendment requires unanimous convictions for both state and federal juries. The high court agreed, overturning a 1972 decision and striking down Jim Crow-era policies crafted to disenfranchise Black and minority citizens—and opening the door for new trials for those convicted by non-unanimous panels.

At Ramos’s re-trial, an O’Melveny defense team highlighted the flawed police investigation and weakness of the circumstantial evidence presented against him. A racially diverse jury reached a unanimous verdict within four hours. Ramos was released from custody the day after he was acquitted.