The Fate of Oregon’s Non-Unanimous Jury Law

If you’ve seen any courtroom movie or tv show, you know how important a juror’s vote can be. It can be a matter of life or death. It can be the difference between walking away a free man or spending countless years in a prison cell. In the movie 12 Angry Men, for example, eleven of the twelve jurors were committed to sending a teenager to the electric chair for a murder he claims he did not commit. In order to send him to the chair, the vote needed to be unanimous. An 11-1 vote would have been insufficient and resulted in a hung jury. Thus, the defendant’s fate would have been left in the hands of another jury.

 In Oregon, however, James Worley was convicted of seven counts of sexually abusing a young relative on a 10-2 split verdict. One juror described how grueling the three-day deliberation process was, noting that it was “awful being in that room” and that coming to a decision was “very tough.” In any other state, this decision would have resulted in hung jury. But in this case, the 10-2 decision resulted in a twelve-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Oregon is currently the only state that still has a non-unanimous jury system. Accordingly, a criminal defendant can be found guilty by juries of 10-2 or 11-1. The only exception to the law is if the criminal defendant is charged with murder.

The Oregon law, which was passed in 1934, has received criticism by people claiming that it was enacted for “racist reasons.” A law professor in Oregon who has studied the history of non-unanimous juries, noted that the law was  intended to “dampen the influence of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities on juries.”  Now, the Supreme Court is weighing the constitutionality of non-unanimous verdicts and is expected to come to a decision this month. In Ramos v. Louisiana, a case currently before the Supreme Court, the defendant was convicted of second-degree murder based on a 10-2 jury vote. As a result, the defendant is currently serving a life sentence with no chance of parole. The specific issue in Ramos is whether the Fourteenth Amendment fully incorporated the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a unanimous verdict. If the Supreme Court decides that non-unanimous laws are unconstitutional, then the court would effectively overturn the ruling in Apodaca v. Oregon, which held that non-unanimous juries in state criminal courts are constitutional.

The idea of overturning Apodaca has divided many people in Oregon. As noted above, opponents of non-unanimous juries believe that the law is “rooted in racial and ethnic discrimination” and “allows for a jury to disagree in a way that . . . is not beyond a reasonable doubt.” On the other hand, supporters of non-unanimous juries argue that it makes the criminal justice system more efficient by reducing the amount of hung juries. Whatever the Supreme Court decides, however, will have a major impact on Oregon’s criminal justice system. For Mr. Worley, who has maintained his innocence, the possibility of overturning Apodaca has provided him with a glimmer of hope.