Oregon's House majority leader said her Democratic caucus will attempt to scrap the state's unusual jury system during next year's legislative session.

Lawmakers plan to introduce two bills in 2019 in an effort to overturn Oregon's non-unanimous jury law, Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The first would seek a legislative fix to the law that allows juries in most felony cases — aside from murder — to convict defendants with a 10-2 vote, she said.

The second would refer the issue to voters, who would then decide whether to overturn an amendment in the state constitution enacted more than eight decades ago.

Her announcement, first reported by OPB, came after voters in Louisiana this week overwhelmingly rejected their system of split-verdict convictions, making Oregon the only state to have such a law.

The federal government and all other states require a 12-0 verdict for crimes such as manslaughter, rape and arson.

"With the dubious distinction of now being the only state to have non-unanimous juries, there's a sense of urgency around this issue you wouldn't have found a couple of years ago," said Williamson, who plans to sponsor both bills. "It's one of the most racist parts of our criminal justice system."

Critics have claimed that non-unanimous juries are deeply flawed and punitive toward nonwhite defendants, remnants from an era when discrimination toward racial and religious minorities was endemic to public life.

Louisiana's majority verdict system, a relic of the Jim Crow era, was adopted during the state's 1898 constitutional convention to diminish the influence of black jurors upon verdicts, scholars say.

In Oregon nearly four decades later, it was a sensational murder trial involving a Jewish suspect that prompted voters in 1934 to enshrine a non-unanimous jury system into the state constitution, according to advocates and legal scholars.

That analysis captured the attention of state lawmakers last year after Lewis and Clark law professor Aliza Kaplan published an influential article in the Oregon Law Review.

The article argued how non-unanimous juries undermined the state's criminal justice system and is a vestige of Oregon's less-tolerant past.

Since then, the Legislature has held multiple hearings on non-unanimous juries, and Williamson began crafting potential legislation.

In January, Oregon's powerful district attorneys association said it would lead a ballot initiative fight to repeal the state's split verdict jury system, though it abandoned its plans only weeks later.

A number of Oregon district attorneys, including Multnomah County's Rod Underhill, remain vocal in their support of ending non-unanimous juries in the state.

Others, however, embrace the current system and reject the characterization that it's rooted in racism. They say it helps reduce the number of hung juries, which ultimately benefits crime victims.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum as well as the Office of Public Defense Services have both indicated they would like to see the state's jury law change. And with Democrats holding a three-fifths supermajority in both legislative chambers after this week's elections, the likelihood of such a change has increased.

As for Oregon voters supporting an initiative to overturn non-unanimous juries, Williamson said she's optimistic. She pointed to the electorate's decision this week to reject a repeal to the state's pioneering sanctuary law that proponents say reduces racial profiling of immigrants and nonwhite residents.

"I think that was an indicator that people believe we need to continuously improve our criminal justice system, especially when it disproportionately impacts on people of color," she said. "It was a resounding rejection of racism in our criminal justice system."

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh