Apodaca v. Oregon
Case Date: 07/22/1972
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Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972) is a United States Supreme Court case which held that state juries may convict a defendant by less than unanimity even though federal law required that federal juries must reach criminal verdicts unanimously. 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. Thus Oregon's law did not violate due process.
Justice Powell, in his concurring opinion, argued that there was such a constitutional right 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.
Arguing the case for the state of Oregon were Jacob Tanzer and Lee Johnson; both would later serve on the Oregon Court of Appeals.
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