NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Louisiana Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state law allowing juries to convict felony defendants by votes of 10-to-2.Death penalty cases in Louisiana require unanimous verdicts from 12-member juries, but the law allows non-unanimous verdicts of 10-2 in felony cases where the punishment is imprisonment at hard labor.Tuesday’s state Supreme Court opinion overturns a 2008 decision by Judge Wilford Carter in Calcasieu Parish. Carter had ruled that suspects in two second-degree murder cases were entitled to unanimous verdicts, even though second-degree murder does not carry a death sentence.At issue in the cases was Article 782 in Louisiana’s Code of Criminal Procedure, which deals with the number of jurors needed to convict for different levels of crimes.”This court has previously discussed and affirmed the constitutionality of Article 782 on at least three occasions,” Justice Chet Traylor wrote in Tuesday’s opinion, taking Carter to task for a “rather insubstantial” ruling that relied on “no discernible legal analysis.”Traylor said Carter failed to take note of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s past rulings on the issue. He also said that United States Supreme Court precedent upholds the constitutionality of non-unanimous verdicts in state courts.——Contact The Daily Reveille news staff at [email protected]