This spring the Supreme Court is expected to rule on a case (Edwards v. Vannoy) that will serve as an important test of America’s ongoing reckoning over racial injustice, and whether we will not only condemn the sins of the past—but repair their harms in the present.
The case concerns whether the Court’s April 2020 ruling invalidating Louisiana’s notoriously racist non-unanimous jury rule will apply retroactively to people who are still serving sentences imposed by split juries.
The stakes are high—and not only for the more than 1,500 incarcerated people whose lives hang in the balance.