The grand jury concept has been much in the news of late.\u00a0 People with axes to grind (including multiple talking heads on CNN) decry the fact that grand juries in Missouri and New\u00a0 York exonerated the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson and the one who grabbed Eric Garner and pulled him to the sidewalk in NYC.\u00a0 Benjamin Crump, the plaintiffs\u2019 attorney for the families in the Brown case, the Garner case, and the Trayvon Martin death before that, has called for a prosecutor to indict without sending the case to the grand jury in yet another racially \u2013charged case.<\/p>\n
I know many defense lawyers \u2013 and many citizens from the far left to the far right \u2013 who hate the grand jury system and believe it should be abolished.\u00a0 Having worked within the American criminal justice system in one way or another for more than four decades \u2013 as arresting officer, as police department prosecutor, as expert witness for both sides \u2013 I have to profoundly disagree.<\/p>\n
When people hear the word \u201cjury,\u201d they think of the regular, \u201cpetit\u201d jury: normally six to twelve people with some alternates as \u201cspares\u201d who determine guilt or innocence in a full-blown criminal trial, or apportion responsibility between plaintiff and defendant in the trial of a civil lawsuit. The grand jury is exclusive to the criminal side of the justice house, and is called by the prosecutor to determine whether or not there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, or at least, enough question thereof that the matter should be sorted out in a full-blown trial.\u00a0 The grand jury will return either a \u201ctrue bill,\u201d which means that the person in question is now a defendant, stands indicted, and is fully inserted into the gullet of the criminal justice machine, or \u201cno true bill,\u201d which essentially exonerates the potential defendant, though that\u2019s not exactly 100% because the prosecutor can usually re-file the case.<\/p>\n
The grand jury is the province of the prosecutor. Often, a defense lawyer for the \u201cperson of interest\u201d won\u2019t even be allowed in the room, and if he is, he won\u2019t be allowed to advocate for his client. This is what led to the famous saying that \u201ca prosecutor can convince a jury to indict a ham sandwich.\u201d The members of the grand jury hear what the prosecutor allows them to hear.\u00a0 This is what ticks off absolutists on both far left and far right.<\/p>\n
And of course, if you are the one who wants to lead the lynch mob that hangs the defendant, you\u2019ll be ROYALLY pissed off if the prosecutor actually allows exculpatory evidence which convinces his or her fellow citizens to return \u201cno true bill.\u201d\u00a0 This is apparently why Benjamin Crump does not want people he hopes to pillory to go in front of grand juries, and it is why CNN\u2019s Sunny Hostin, a former prosecutor herself, was outraged that exculpatory evidence was presented to the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri.<\/p>\n
Having been on both sides of this two-way street, I support the grand jury concept, and I applaud prosecutors who perform their duty as ministers of justice to allow exculpatory evidence (indicative of innocence) to go before the grand jurors as well as inculpatory evidence (indicative of guilt).\u00a0 Their job is as much to exonerate the innocent as it is to prosecute the guilty.<\/p>\n
Some say, \u201cBut if the prosecutor is the sole arbiter of the evidence, he can get anyone he wants indicted!\u201d\u00a0 To which I say, \u201cSO WHAT?\u201d<\/p>\n
Please understand: IN MOST JURISDICTIONS, THE PROSECUTOR CAN INDICT ON HIS OR HER OWN WITHOUT <\/strong>A GRAND JURY ANYWAY<\/em>, under what is generally called an \u201coffer of information.\u201d<\/p>\n In the cases currently under media scrutiny, the grand juries heard both sides of the story, while the public and the talking heads only heard one side\u2019s narrative.\u00a0 Before anyone joins in the howl of the lynch mob, they should ask themselves one question:\u00a0 \u201cIf I <\/em>was the one accused, would I want my side of the story and the evidence supporting me to be heard, before I was sent to trial in a case that would likely cost me six figures worth of dollars and incalculable suffering for myself and my family, before the decision was made to put me through that ordeal?\u201d<\/p>\n The grand juries in the Brown death in Ferguson and the Garner death in New York did hear both sides. \u00a0\u00a0Having heard that, they each issued no true bill.<\/p>\n I for one respect that, and the prosecutorial authorities who allowed those grand juries to hear both sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The grand jury concept has been much in the news of late.\u00a0 People with axes to grind (including multiple talking heads on CNN) decry the fact that grand juries in Missouri and New\u00a0 York exonerated the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson and the one who grabbed Eric Garner and pulled him to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-firearm-owners-civil-rights","8":"category-legal-issues","9":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}