January 3, 2023 3:00 a.m.
On Friday, the Oregon Supreme Court in Watkins v. Ackley held that the requirement of unanimous jury verdicts in serious cases applies to older criminal cases as well as those still on appeal.
A release from the Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General said in doing so, the Court acknowledged that Oregon law had not been clear on this issue of retroactivity.
At least hundreds of convictions are involved, and the release said the Oregon Department of Justice will work immediately to implement the Court’s decision.
Friday’s ruling applies to cases where a criminal conviction was final and the appeals, if any, were over before the Ramos decision issued in April 2020.
The release said in 1934, Oregon voters enacted a law that allowed for non-unanimous jury verdicts of 10-2 or 11-1 in most criminal cases. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Oregon’s non-unanimous jury verdicts. Oregon continued to allow non-unanimous verdicts until 2020.
In the 2019 Oregon legislative session, Oregon DOJ supported legislative efforts to put a measure on the ballot ending the state’s long-standing practice of non-unanimous jury verdicts. The bill did not make it into law.
In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Ramos v. Louisiana that under the U.S. Constitution, a criminal defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial includes the right to a unanimous jury verdict. Its Appellate Division reviewed more than 750 direct appeal cases and identified hundreds of convictions requiring reversal. The Oregon appellate courts have since reversed these convictions and sent over 470 of these cases back for new trials.
The DOJ said the Ramos decision left many questions unanswered, including whether the new procedural rule requiring unanimity applies to older cases where final judgements of conviction had already been entered when Ramos was decided.
In response to Friday’s decision, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she was grateful to both the state appellate courts for expediting the issue of retroactivity of the Ramos ruling.
More information on the opinion is linked: https://www.courts.oregon.gov/news/Lists/ArticleNews/Attachments/1802/9023fc25635e634fa888c1763bbb745d-12-30-22%20Opinion%20Media%20Release%20Final.pdf