Oregon, since 1934, has been one of only two states — the other being Louisiana — that allows non-unanimous jury votes. Except in the case of first-degree murder, split verdicts have been permitted for criminal felony cases, including rape and arson, with a 10-2 or 11-1 vote. Those in opposition have cited racial, religious and ethnic discrimination as the foundation of this practice, referred to as “Jim Crow-era jury law.”
On April 20, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote to overturn this legislation after finding non-unanimous jury systems to be unconstitutional. This new development could negate hundreds of convictions in Oregon.
This case focused on the 2016 trial of Louisiana vs. Ramos. Evangelisto Ramos was convicted of killing a woman in New Orleans by a 10-2 jury, which was permitted by state law at the time. Louisiana voters have since banned non-unanimous verdicts, applicable to 2018 cases and later.
Public support for ending non-unanimous verdicts in Oregon began gathering momentum in 2017 when Lewis and Clark College law professor Aliza Kaplan wrote a substantial article published by the Oregon Law Review.
Kaplan wrote that “nonunanimous verdicts undermine the reasonable doubt requirement of the right to a jury trial” and cites the 1933 case of Apodaca v. Oregon — a highly publicized murder trial with a Jewish suspect — as the event that prompted Oregon voters to modify the State Constitution after one juror refused to convict.
