SALEM — Hundreds of felony convictions became invalid Friday, Dec. 30, after the Oregon Supreme Court struck down all nonunanimous jury verdicts reached before the practice was banned two years ago.

The retroactive ruling applies to all split-jury convictions reached during the 86-year stretch when Oregon was one of only two states, alongside Louisiana, to allow the practice.

In a concurring opinion, Justice pro tempore Richard Baldwin described the authorization of 10-2 or 11-1 jury verdicts by Oregon voters in 1934 as a “self-inflicted injury” that was intended to minimize the voice of nonwhite jurors.

“We must understand that the passage of our non-unanimous jury verdict law has not only caused great harm to people of color,” Baldwin wrote. “That unchecked bigotry also undermined the fundamental Sixth Amendment rights of all Oregonians for nearly a century.”

The U.S. Supreme Court previously outlawed divided verdicts in its landmark Ramos decision, but the order only applied to open cases and convictions that were actively being appealed when the ruling was made in April 2020.

The Oregon Department of Justice says the Ramos ruling vacated more than 470 convictions with active appeals, meaning that prosecutors were required to essentially reboot the case from the beginning and either pursue a new trial, cut a plea deal or dismiss the charges.

The new ruling means county district attorneys will have to make a similar decision for cases where the defendant had already exhausted their final appeal.

There are approximately 300 people, mostly in state prison, who have sought to restart their appeals process because they were convicted by a disunited jury, according to Aliza Kaplan, a Lewis & Clark law professor and leader of the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic.

They are not eligible for immediate release but will be transferred from the state Department of Correction to the local county jail while prosecutors mull how to revisit their case.

A handful of others currently in custody are likely to file new appeals, Kaplan said, while people who have already finished serving their time could seek to get the conviction deleted from their record. Many people out of custody may not remember if they were convicted non-unanimously, however, and there is no central database of older split verdicts, she said.

“I’m thrilled for the individual people who will get what all Americans deserve, which is a fair trial, but this issue is a lot bigger than any individual case,” said Kaplan. “It’s an issue about closing the book on historical wrongs that was based in racism and discrimination.”

In a statement, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum applauded the state’s highest court’s decision.

“It was a critical piece of this complex process of undoing a rule that should never have been enacted in the first place — now nearly 90 years ago,” she said. I stand committed to eradicating inequities and ensuring fairness and impartiality in the delivery of justice in our state.”