Tales from the Grand Jury Room | Hillman Foundation

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Tales from the Grand Jury Room

What is it like to serve on a grand jury? Lots of people are suddenly curious after grand juries in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY failed to indict police officers for killing unarmed black men.

Misha Leptic of 3QuarksDaily recalls his experiences as a grand juror in New York City:

Eventually, in the course of our daily proceedings a curiously adversarial dynamic developed. As a jury, we did our best to establish a solid understanding of what transpired for any given case. But much of it felt like being in Plato’s cave. We only saw what the prosecutors and police wanted us to see, and would further guide us, as much as possible, in how to see it. Due to the confidential nature of the proceedings, note-taking was prohibited. And without the counterbalancing presence of a defense counsel, or of the salutary effects of cross-examination, the end result was, more often than not, a shrug of the shoulders and a vote to indict. [3QD]

Leptic concludes that, “[i]f the purpose of the system is to generate indictments, then the system works really well. Hence the well-known quote from chief justice Wachtler about the indictability of ham sandwiches.”

If it’s that easy for a semi-motivated prosecutor to get an indictment at a low standard of proof in an unopposed proceeding, it really makes you wonder why the police officer who choked Eric Garner walked free and the guy who filmed the attack got indicted on an ostensibly unrelated charge. It’s all about priorities.

 

[Photo credit: Indict! Indict! Indict! Jeffreyw, Creative Commons.]