Evangelisto Ramos, whose successful appeal of a murder conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court made unconstitutional nonunanimous jury verdicts and paved the way for hundreds of people, including him, to be retried, was declared not guilty late Wednesday night by an Orleans Parish jury.
The verdict came less than four hours after Ramos’ second trial concluded in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, but eight years after he was accused of the stabbing death of Trenice Fedison, whose body was found in a standard-issue municipal trashcan in New Orleans’ Central City neighborhood — and three years after he won the right to have his fate decided by an undivided jury of his peers.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the split verdicts that had persisted in Louisiana for more than 100 years, sowed into the state’s constitution by white supremacists. The highest court’s ruling allowed people who had not exhausted the appeals their original verdicts to be tried anew.
The decision followed a Louisiana law that two years earlier outlawed nonunanimous verdicts in the state. But it did nothing to reverse previous split-jury convictions, nor did it demand new trials.
This week, Ramos faced a second jury. Following a three-day trial that concluded late Wednesday night, all 12 jurors decided Orleans Parish prosecutors had failed to prove that Ramos, 50, had stabbed Fedison to death in 2014. Ramos had been previously convicted in 2015 of the same crime by a divided jury, and he spent more than eight years imprisoned before his second trial.
“This verdict cements Evangelisto Ramos’ legacy, not only for ending unconstitutional Jim Crow juries, but also as a symbol for the countless others who have been wrongfully convicted by an unjust system from a bygone era,” defense attorney Sarah Chervinsky said following the decision.
Check back with NOLA.com for more on this developing story.
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