Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that state juries may convict a defendant by a less-than-unanimous verdict in a felony criminal case. The four-justice plurality opinion of the court, written by Justice White, affirmed the judgment of the Oregon Court of Appeals and held that there was no constitutional right to a unanimous verdict. Although federal law requires federal juries to reach criminal verdicts unanimously, the Court held Oregon's practice did not violate the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury and so allowed it to continue. In Johnson v. Louisiana, a case decided on the same day, the Court held that Louisiana's similar practice of allowing criminal convictions by a jury vote of 9–3 did not violate due process or equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Powell, in his concurring opinion, argued that there was a constitutional right to a unanimous jury in the Sixth Amendment, but that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause does not incorporate that right as applied to the states. This case is part of a line of cases interpreting if and how the Sixth Amendment is applied against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment for the purposes of incorporation doctrine, although the division of opinions prevented a clear-cut answer to that question in this case.
Apodaca v. Oregon was overruled by Ramos v. Louisiana (2020).
Background on non-unanimous jury verdicts
Federal law requires that juries return a unanimous verdict—one that all members of the jury agree upon—in criminal trials. While most states follow the same requirement for felony convictions, at the time when Apodaca reached the U.S. Supreme Court, neither Oregon nor Louisiana required state court juries to return unanimous verdicts.
Oregon created its rule in 1934 by state constitutional amendment. Specifically, as long as at least 10 jurors on a 12-member jury agreed, the jury could render a verdict of guilty or not guilty. The Louisiana Legislature passed a similar "Majority Rule" law in 1880, allowing for jury verdicts of 9–3, which was later ratified at its 1898 constitutional convention.
In 2018, Louisiana voters passed a constitutional amendment that ended their practice of non-unanimous juries. When Apodaca was overruled by Ramos v. Louisiana in April 2020, Oregon was the only state that still allowed non-unanimous jury verdicts for felonies (although first-degree murder convictions require a unanimous jury verdict).
Facts and procedural posture
Robert Apodaca, Henry Morgan Cooper, Jr., and James Arnold Madden, were convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, burglary in a dwelling, and grand larceny, respectively, in separate trials in Oregon state court. All three juries returned non-unanimous verdicts: Apodaca and Madden's juries voted 11–1 to convict, and Cooper's jury voted 10–2. They appealed their convictions to the Court of Appeals of Oregon, arguing that they were entitled to have the jury instructed that jurors must unanimously agree to convict. The Court of Appeals of Oregon, sitting en banc, affirmed their convictions. In doing so, the court relied on a previous Oregon Supreme Court case, State v. Gann, 254 Or. 549 (1969), that had upheld the provision of the Oregon Constitution allowing the 10–2 jury practice as not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Oregon Supreme Court denied review, and the three sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Johnson v. Louisiana (a case decided by the Supreme Court on the same day as Apodaca), a criminal defendant in Louisiana raised the same issue: whether a less-than-unanimous jury verdict in state court criminal cases violates a defendant's constitutional rights. Frank Johnson was convicted of armed robbery by a Louisiana state court jury verdict of 9–3, which was permissible under Louisiana law. However, unlike in Apodaca, where petitioners argued that this practice violated their Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial (as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment), the petitioner in Johnson raised Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process claims. The Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed his conviction, holding that a 9–3 jury verdict did not violate his equal protection or due process rights. Johnson petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review.
Both Apodaca and Johnson were argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 1, 1971, and reargued on January 10, 1972. Arguing the case for the state of Oregon were Jacob Tanzer and Lee Johnson; both would later serve on the Oregon Court of Appeals. The Court decided both cases on May 22, 1972, and upheld the Oregon and Louisiana non-unanimous jury convictions.