Oregon’s top two courts have begun reversing convictions by non-unanimous juries, the first of hundreds — and perhaps ultimately thousands — of cases that will be scrutinized after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that non-unanimous jury verdicts are unconstitutional, reports the Associated Press. The Oregon Supreme Court returned 16 cases to trial courts. The Court of Appeal reversed convictions in three other cases. “The county prosecutor can decide to drop the charges, proceed with the charges or, perhaps, try to negotiate a settlement,” said Marc Brown, an Oregon public defender who works on appeals. “For example, there may be a case in which the defendant already served most of their sentence, so the prosecutor may offer time served in exchange for a plea.”
A sample case: In 2016, Robert Chaffee got into a heated argument on a driveway, near Medford in rural Oregon, with a man named Richard Hoglen. Chaffee then got into his SUV. “Chaffee then rammed the gate with Hoglen behind it. Chaffee’s vehicle progressed through the gate and over Hoglen,” a police report says. Hoglen suffered “substantial injuries to his legs, ribs and face.” A jury acquitted Chaffee of attempted murder. In non-unanimous verdicts, the jury convicted him of two counts of assault. He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison. Jackson County District Attorney Beth Heckert is preparing to get Chaffee back in court for a retrial. In many older cases, retrial will likely be impossible because over time “witnesses disappear, memories fade, and evidence is lost,” said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum. No murder convictions are among cases facing potential reversals because juries needed to be unanimous to convict for murder.