Legislative action that would have asked Oregon voters to end non-unanimous juries in Oregon quietly died in the Oregon Senate last week because top lawmakers weren’t confident they could muster a successful ballot campaign.

There was widespread support among lawyers and lawmakers to end Oregon’s standing as the only state in the country that allows for criminal convictions for crimes short of first-degree murder by non-unanimous juries.

House Joint Resolution 10 called on voters to remove that provision from the Oregon Constitution and would have appeared on the November 2020 ballot.

The resolution, championed by House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, passed unanimously in the House in mid-June. It remained in the line-up for a Senate vote until the second-to-last day of the session. That day, Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, referred it to the Senate rules committee, effectively killing it.

Despite its widespread legislative support to end non-unanimous juries, which can drown out the voices of minority jurors, polling showed proponents would have faced an uphill challenge to persuade voters to approve it, Senate Rules Chair Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

That is true in part because the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Ramos v. Louisiana, a case arguing whether the Sixth Amendment’s rule on a fair jury trial applies to states, during its next term, which runs October 2019 to June 2020. A pending court decision could pose a distraction to potential campaign workers and donors asked to step up during a time of uncertainty, top Democratic lawmakers said.

“We have to do it at a time and circumstance that it will be successful,” Burdick said. “The worst thing would be to put it on the ballot and have it fail.”

Ironically, a high court decision in the Louisiana case won’t have impact in that state, the only other state that recently had non-unanimous juries. Louisiana voters amended their state’s constitution to remove the practice in November 2018.

Williamson said a campaign to amend Oregon’s Constitution in fall 2020 would be challenging to plan and carry out while waiting for a Supreme Court decision. She said she and other Democrats weren’t concerned about opponents waging an organized campaign to keep split juries, but about planning while uncertain about a Supreme Court opinion.

“The question is if you can get supporters excited about campaign and involved when there might be a decision coming from the Supreme Court,” Williamson said. “A constitutional amendment campaign is always a difficult campaign. The concerns are about whether or not we even need one.”

Support for such a campaign existed outside the Legislature. Positive testimony from a May hearing on the measure came from powerful forces including the Department of Justice, Oregon State Bar and the Oregon District Attorneys Association.

Experts acknowledge the practice’s discriminatory effects. Aliza Kaplan, a law professor at Lewis and Clark Law School, said the practice of allowing 10-2 verdicts has created a method to disregard minority jurors’ voices and incarcerate people with less than “beyond reasonable doubt,” as required in the Sixth Amendment.

“It’s really affected every juror whose voice wasn’t heard and every person with a criminal conviction,” Kaplan said.

Legal scholars expect the Supreme Court to strike down non-unanimous juries during its upcoming term, Kaplan said. Still, she said Oregon voters should have the opportunity to remove it from the Constitution instead of allowing the Supreme Court to determine the practice unconstitutional.

“If the courts strike it down, it’s still in our Constitution,” Kaplan said. “Because it went on for all these years, to shut people’s voices down and due to our demographics to affect minorities. We should all want to go to the polls and get rid of it. It’s a stain on our state and our constitution.”

Several lawmakers said they plan to push for the change in future sessions, including reintroducing the measure in 2020’s short session if the Supreme Court rules the practice is constitutional. Williamson said there would be enough time to get it on the November 2020 ballot.

-- McKenna Ross

mross@oregonian.com

503-221-5776; @mckenna_ross_

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