But in fact, there are more than 1,000 people in Louisiana like Gray, convicted by split juries and still imprisoned, according to the Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans-based nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform. Although the Supreme Court says cases like theirs are unconstitutional going forward, it left the decision about what to do with those convicted long ago to the states. And Louisiana alone says they should stay behind bars.

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Louisiana State Supreme Court declined to grant new trials for those prisoners, acquiescing to local prosecutors who feared that retrying hundreds of decades-old cases would tie up state courts. The conservative state Legislature, meanwhile, has repeatedly rejected bills that would have required a reexamination of their cases.

That left one very narrow path for Gray and others like him, mostly Black men, to have their cases revisited. If they could credibly argue that their convictions were secured illegally — if there was race-based discrimination in the case, for example — they could strike a plea deal with a prosecutor, securing their release. But a new state law, passed last year at the urging of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, limited local prosecutors’ ability to broker such deals, cutting off the last remaining avenue of relief for those imprisoned by nonunanimous juries.