{"id":28367,"date":"2023-01-07T00:51:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-07T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/07\/oregon-supreme-court-applies-scotus-ruling-retroactively-overturns-all-non-unanimous-jury-convictions\/"},"modified":"2023-01-07T00:51:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-07T00:51:00","slug":"oregon-supreme-court-applies-scotus-ruling-retroactively-overturns-all-non-unanimous-jury-convictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/07\/oregon-supreme-court-applies-scotus-ruling-retroactively-overturns-all-non-unanimous-jury-convictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Supreme Court Applies SCOTUS Ruling Retroactively, Overturns All Non-Unanimous Jury Convictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n
<\/p>\n

\n

from the can’t-give-back-the-time,-but-can-make-things-right<\/i> dept<\/h3>\n

In April 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling<\/a> that made things clear to the two states (Oregon and Louisiana) still inexplicably allowing people to be convicted by non-unanimous juries: to continue to do so violated the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused.<\/p>\n

The only two states affected applied the ruling, eliminating convictions by non-unanimous verdicts. But the decision was not retroactive. So far, Louisiana courts have allowed past wrongs to go uncorrected. (Of course, this is a state that still regularly enforces its outdated criminal defamation law.) <\/p>\n

Fortunately for Oregonians whose rights were violated by non-unanimous verdicts, the state\u2019s highest court has decided the law should be applied retroactively<\/a>, instantly invalidating 86 years of non-unanimous verdicts. (h\/t Peter Bonilla<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\n

Hundreds of felony convictions became invalid Friday\u00a0after the Oregon Supreme Court struck down all nonunanimous jury verdicts<\/a>\u00a0reached before the practice was banned two years ago<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In a concurring opinion, Justice Pro Tempore Richard Baldwin described the authorization of 10-2 and 11-1 jury verdicts in 1934 as a \u201cself-inflicted injury\u201d that was intended to\u00a0minimize the voice of nonwhite jurors.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe must understand that the passage of our non-unanimous jury-verdict law has not only caused great harm to people of color,\u201d Baldwin\u00a0wrote<\/a>. \u201cThat unchecked bigotry also undermined the fundamental Sixth Amendment rights of all Oregonians for nearly a century.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The decision<\/a> [PDF] makes it clear the only reason non-unanimous jury verdicts were allowed was to prevent minorities from being treated as equitable members of juries. The amendment to the state constitution was provoked by a controversial trial in which an accused murderer went free because one jury member wasn\u2019t convinced of the suspect\u2019s guilt. The Oregonian calls itself out for its assistance<\/a> in creating this decades-long miscarriage of justice in its excellent retrospective on the amendment finally invalidated by the US Supreme Court in 2020.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis newspaper\u2019s opinion is that the increased urbanization of American life \u2026 and\u00a0the vast immigration into America from southern and eastern Europe, of people untrained in the jury system, have combined to make the jury of twelve increasingly unwieldy and unsatisfactory,\u201d it wrote on Nov. 25, 1933.<\/em><\/p>\n

The remarks weren\u2019t the first time The Morning Oregonian took aim at ethnic jurors. In previous editorials around that time, the paper bemoaned \u201cmixed-blood\u201d jurors and lamented the role that some immigrants played on juries, questioning their \u201csense of responsibility\u201d and \u201cviews on crime and punishment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The state Supreme Court says the amendment put in place to allow non-unanimous verdicts was a clear violation of Constitutional rights, and one created solely to allow white jurors to override minority jurors.<\/p>\n

\n

As the Supreme Court recognized in Ramos, Oregon\u2019s adoption, in 1934, of the constitutional amendment that ever since has permitted conviction of most crimes by a nonunanimous <\/em> jury, \u201ccan be traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the influence of racial and ethnic and religious minorities on Oregon juries.\u201d In other words, Oregon discarded the common-law unanimous guilty verdict requirement\u2014a requirement that Oregon courts had recognized and applied in criminal trials from the time Oregon\u2019s Constitution went into effect in 1859 until the adoption of the 1934 amendment\u2014precisely because it can prevent racial, religious, and other such majorities from overriding the views of minorities in determining guilt or innocence, a result that is offensive to our sense of what is fundamentally fair.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Applying the Ramos <\/em>decision retroactively may be difficult \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t give back the years state courts took away by allowing non-unanimous verdicts \u2014 but in the interest of justice, it must be done.<\/p>\n

\n

We recognize that our decision in this case will likely lead to the reexamination of many judgments that became final years or decades ago. But our analysis of ORS 138.530(1)(a), its grounding in the extraordinary remedy of habeas corpus, and our application of that statute when the violation of a constitutional right resulted in a criminal trial that lacked the \u201cfairness we expect in the administration of justice,\u201d Brooks, 226 Or at 204, compels our decision here<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The concurrence goes into more detail on the racist history of non-unanimous verdicts and is definitely worth a read. And the concurrence says this must be done \u2014 both the recounting of the racist history as well as the retroactive application of the SCOTUS ruling. To do otherwise is to allow the state and certain residents to conveniently forget the past, something that dooms them to repeat it.<\/p>\n

\n

As citizens of Oregon from all backgrounds\u2014particularly based on our history of racial exclusion\u2014we must understand that the passage of our nonunanimous jury verdict law has not only caused great harm to people of color: That unchecked bigotry also undermined the fundamental Sixth Amendment rights of all Oregonians for nearly a century.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This will tear bandages off some old wounds. But it must be done if the state of Oregon expects to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. <\/p>\n