In hindsight, it really was too good to be true.

News stories last month revealed that a group of powerful elected officials was planning to campaign for repeal of a constitutional amendment long reviled by justice reform advocates. Out of nowhere, it seemed, there was momentum to change a discriminatory 1934 law that requires only 10 of 12 jurors to agree on a guilty verdict for defendants to be convicted of most felonies. Oregon is one of only two states in the nation that recognizes non-unanimous jury verdicts.

And strangely enough, the group leading the charge was the Oregon District Attorneys Association, which represents the top prosecutors of Oregon's 36 counties. Despite benefiting from the law, some of the district attorneys expressed discomfort with the law's genesis in Oregon's racist history. The district attorneys' stand seemed an impressive commitment to justice and fair play, over any self-interested desire to simply win their cases.

That is, until the rest of the story came out.

As The Oregonian/OregonLive's Shane Dixon Kavanaugh reported, there was more to the group's plan than just seeking repeal of the non-unanimous jury law. The association also wanted to ask voters to revise the provision granting defendants the right to have a judge hear their case instead of a jury.

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It's unclear what specific solution the group had in mind, and to be fair, word of the possible campaign went public before the group had fully fleshed out its plans. The association told Kavanaugh that prosecutors want greater say in the ability to waive a jury trial, like prosecutors in some other states have. But the coupling of the two provisions led to understandable concern by reform advocates that the right to waive a jury trial - a key constitutional right recognized in every state in the country - could be undermined. The district attorneys' association has now dropped its efforts to change either provision.

That may be for the best, at least for now. Oregon certainly should not do anything that simply swaps its outlier status on non-unanimous juries for outlier status on waiving jury trials.

But the problems posed by Oregon's non-unanimous jury law remain, as we have written about previously. Criminal defendants face a lower threshold for conviction than most everywhere else in the country. Oregon itself has a ridiculous double-standard in which the state requires jury unanimity for murder and misdemeanor charges, but not for the broad swath of serious crimes like rape, manslaughter and arson. And the racist and xenophobic background of the law's passage as well as the persistent disparities that show up in the criminal justice system from who is arrested to who serves on juries only reinforces the reality that Oregon needs to change this unfair law.

That can still happen. There's another group of elected leaders who have the power to refer this measure directly to the ballot - the Oregon Legislature. Conveniently, they are about to start a 35-day legislative session. And while the 2018 ballot may be too soon for a coordinated campaign on the issue, legislators should assess how and when to get this before Oregon voters. It's way past time to join the 48 other states and the federal government in recognizing that a non-unanimous verdict is not a defensible one.

- The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board