As the article below indicates, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to take on Bowen v. Oregon or the issue of non-unanimous verdicts this term. In 1972, the Supreme Court in Apodaca v. Oregon determined that the Constitution does not require unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal courts. Today, two states (Louisiana and Oregon) allow non-unanimous criminal verdicts (10-2).
According to the ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr., "unanimous jury verdicts require deeper analysis of facts and increase the average deliberation time from 75 minutes (for non-unanimous verdicts) to 138 minutes. I know that if my future depended on a jury verdict, I would want the standards set as high as possible." Besides the ABA, other organizations have come out against non-unanimous verdicts and have filed amicus curiae briefs encouraging the high court to find them unconstitutional.
Supreme Court won't take up challenge to non-unanimous verdicts
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