Jury Verdicts in Spotlight on Supreme Court’s Opening Day

Courtroom dramas like “Twelve Angry Men” evoke the image of a jury struggling to unanimously decide a criminal defendant’s guilt.

But it only took 10 of 12 Louisiana jurors to convict Evangelisto Ramos of a murder he denies committing.

Now, Ramos wants the U.S. Supreme Court to strike the system that allowed that verdict. He is asking the justices, who will consider his case on the opening day of the high court’s 2019 term, to say once and for all that the Constitution requires unanimous criminal verdicts nationwide.

Louisiana and Oregon are the only states that allow split verdicts. Louisiana ...