NEWS
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
A5
Bill could vacate
some convictions
By ALEX WITTWER
EO Media Group
SALEM — Legislators
are pushing through a broad
reform bill that would retroac-
tively allow criminals to appeal
their case if the verdict wasn’t
reached unanimously.
Senate Bill 1511, which
would allow those previously
convicted of crimes with a
less-than-unanimous jury to
appeal their decision, is based
on the recent Ramos vs. Loui-
siana Supreme Court ruling that
found that non-unanimous juries
were unconstitutional.
Oregon and Louisiana were
the only two states in the nation
to allow non-unanimous juries.
The Oregon law was put into
eff ect in 1934 and had racist and
xenophobic origins, according
to numerous people who testi-
fi ed for SB1511.
The Supreme Court of the
United States denied the retro-
activity clause by a 6-3 ruling
on May 17, 2021, in the case
of Edwards vs. Warden Van-
noy, with Justice Brett Kavana-
ugh writing the majority opin-
ion. However, Kavanaugh also
wrote that the states could make
their own retroactivity laws,
which is what Oregon aims to
do with SB 1511.
Baker County District Attor-
ney Greg Baxter said the law
allowing non-unanimous juries
was followed at the time of
those previous convictions, and
it’s hard to say whether or not
those non-unanimous juries
would have pushed for a unan-
imous verdict if the laws were
diff erent in the past.
“No one can say what the
juries would have done if they
had been required to be unan-
imous,” Baxter stated in an
email. “No one knows if the jury
would have worked just a lit-
tle harder and longer to obtain
a unanimous verdict. It is likely
that once the required unanimity
was obtained, they stopped.”
The broadness of the bill is
beset by its relative succinct-
ness — only about a single page
of amendments to existing law
would take the bill far beyond
the Supreme Court’s ruling. And
it’s happening during an Oregon
legislative session that will only
last 35 days.
“I feel it’s been rushed.
We’re in the short session. This
is supposed to be certain mat-
ters, fi scal aspects, things like
that,” said Justin Nelson, district
attorney for Morrow County,
“and this is a very complicated
and, possibly, very costly bill
that goes far beyond what the
Supreme Court said needed to
be done. Is that something we
need to be doing for the short
session? Is this something we
push through in 35 days?”
The Oregon District Attor-
ney Association raised numer-
ous issues with the bill, including
what would happen for verdicts
that included multiple charges.
“Let’s say you have a
10-count case,” Nelson said.
“And the person’s found guilty
of all counts. Maybe count one
is rape in the fi rst degree, and
then count 10 is false infor-
mation to a police offi cer — a
misdemeanor of some sort —
and ends up being a non-unan-
imous verdict. The concern I
have is that it actually overturns
the entire judgment, not just that
count.”
Other issues the ODAA
raised include how the court
would determine whether a jury
was unanimous or not, given that
jury polling and records of jury
polls were not well tracked, and
beyond any trial record, accord-
ing to the ODAA’s testimony.
The testimony also consid-
ers the possibility that the new
law could be used in conjunc-
tion with the 6th Amendment to
dismiss a conviction due to an
untimely trial.
Foremost, the ODAA raised
an issue with the cost of the
legislation, which provides no
resources for victim assistance
programs for resulting trauma
from having a decided case
returned to trial.
“Oregon’s victims of some
of the most serious crimes we
see are going to be facing new
trauma as thousands of cases are
returned and potentially re-lit-
igated,” testifi ed Rosemary W.
Brewer, executive director of
Oregon Crime Victims Law
Center. “Yet as drafted, SB 1511
has no provisions for increased
victim services. There is going
to be an enormous need for
trauma-informed services, and
we must ensure that victims
have easy access to these ser-
vices as they learn that a part of
their lives they considered to be
closed is reopened.”
The OCVLC testimony also
noted the bill does not provide
any notifi cation for victims of
crimes, or allow for their partici-
pation in the justice system.
“It is unfortunately all too
common that victims’ voices are
left out of the criminal justice
process. Without specifi c provi-
sions for victim notifi cation and
participation,” the testimony
continued, “SB 1511 unwinds
the progress that has been made
in acknowledging the critical
role victims play and in Ore-
gon’s commitment to ensuring
victims are treated with the dig-
nity and respect that the Consti-
tution demands.”
Aliza Kaplan, professor and
director of the Criminal Justice
Reform Clinic at Lewis & Clark
Law School, testifi ed in support
of SB1511 and cited statistics
that show that the non-unani-
mous jury law had a dispropor-
tionate impact on communities
of color.
The Lewis & Clark Law
School testimony also showed
that, of the 244 cases that raised
Ramos concerns, only six orig-
inate from Eastern Oregon —
all of which are in Umatilla
County. However, these are sim-
ply the number of cases with
issues raised about the consti-
tutionality of a non-unanimous
jury — cases where the issue of
non-unanimous juries never was
raised at court likely would exist,
and there is no way of knowing
how many such cases would be
brought to court once again.
“Due to the spread of under-
lying convictions across Ore-
gon counties, mostly clustered
in Oregon’s most populous
counties with the largest dis-
trict attorney offi ces, we do not
believe district attorneys would
be severely overwhelmed by
the proposed remands,” Kaplan
testifi ed.
The 2022 legislative session
runs from Feb. 1 to March 8.
“The new parts are one
page on this bill. The amount
of change that it will do to our
judicial system is staggering.
The cost that it could be is stag-
gering,” Nelson said. “Rush-
ing this through a special ses-
sion — something like this that
is one page — could have a dire
eff ect on victims, and I’m not
sure that’s what we want to go
forward with.”
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