“While in prison I was paid 20 cents/hr to help others w/ legal cases. Decades ago I spotted a legal issue that put a lot of people behind bars.” On Calvin Duncan’s 23rd try the Supreme Court took up non-unanimous juries. He won. His fight isn’t over. More:oregonlive.com/opinion/2020/0…
“When I was lying on my bunk in Angola prison, the maximum-security facility in Louisiana, my dream of coming back to Oregon sustained me. I missed the parks, the hiking trails and the friendly people.”
“In 1982, I was 19 years old & learning the welding trade at the Job Corps program at Mt. Hood. I was planning to join the military. But someone called an anonymous tip line in New Orleans, my hometown, & said that a “negro male” w/ my name had committed a murder the prior year.”
“I spent 28 ½ years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. When lawyers with the Innocence Project New Orleans uncovered exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors hid from my lawyers, the Louisiana Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court.”
“Now, I’m back in Oregon as a first-year law student at Lewis & Clark Law School.” 
“As a “jailhouse lawyer,” I filed petition after petition challenging nonunanimous juries. Louisiana allowed defendants to be sent to prison, sometimes for life, based on jury verdicts of 10-2 or 11-1. The only other state to do so was Oregon. I lost and lost.”
Racist history of non-unanimous juries: “In Louisiana, the split-jury rule was adopted by a Jim Crow era constitutional convention in order to “perpetuate the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race,” according to official state records.”
“In Oregon, the “rule permitting non-unanimous verdicts can similarly be traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the influence of racial, ethnic and religious minorities on Oregon juries.”
Finally, Calvin won in the Supreme Court. Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion in Ramos v. Louisiana & was joined by Kavanaugh. “The court struck down Oregon and Louisiana’s split-jury rule and said that from now on, jury verdicts must be unanimous.” supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf…
“The ruling was an incredible victory. But it’s incomplete. It entitles people convicted by nonunanimous juries to a new trial untainted by racism if their case is on direct appeal. But for those whose cases are older, the law is murkier.”
“Oregon AG @EllenRosenblum appears to be taking the stance that those people are out of luck. Her office has already fought a Marion County man’s attempt to challenge his 2016 conviction by a nonunanimous jury, arguing that Ramos should not apply to older cases like his.”
AG @EllenRosenblum’s “decision means that people will languish in prison based on an unconstitutional rule that Justice Sonia Sotomayor called “racially biased” and Justice Kavanaugh called an “engine of discrimination.”
“@EllenRosenblum has the power to make this right. She can acknowledge the injustice of maintaining the nonunanimous jury verdict standard for older cases just as she has already acknowledged its injustice for cases still in the direct appeals process.”
“As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in striking down nonunanimous juries, it is wrong to “perpetuate something we all know to be wrong only because we fear the consequences of being right.”
“If Black lives matter to @EllenRosenblum, she will do the right thing and give the benefit of Ramos v. Louisiana -- a new trial -- to all of those convicted by racially tainted nonunanimous juries, even those whose cases are beyond direct appeal.”
