What’s a Grand Jury, and Is It Being Manipulated to Indict Police Officers?

Ken Ervin stood before a group of reporters this past February, fellow attorney Doug O'Connell at his side, and talked about the Austin Police Department officers indicted by a grand jury convened by District Attor­ney José Garza. The city had been shocked days earlier when Garza charged 19 officers with assaulting protesters during the May 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in front of APD headquarters at I-35 and Eighth Street.

• After APD officers Chance Bretches and Gregory Gentry were indicted for assault in January 2021, in relation to an arrest made in 2019, the attorneys wrote,"We are forced to conclude the grand jury that heard this case was only given information calculated to produce indictments." So there's a pattern here, a pattern that includes the words"grand jury." Which begs the question: What is a grand jury?It's a pretty significant part of the American system of criminal justice."A jury of one's peers" refers not only to the trial juries who hear cases in court, but to grand juries that decide whether those cases proceed to trial in the first place.

"These are citizens," said Margaret Moore, Garza's predecessor as Travis County D.A. from 2017 to 2021."They typically do not have any particular knowledge about criminal law. They have to get their advice from the prosecutor. ... The prosecutor issues the subpoenas, assembles the evidence, calls the witnesses.

To back up that charge, O'Connell and Broden released an affidavit from APD Detective David Fugitt, who had investigated the case. In it, Fugitt claimed that Garza instructed him to leave out information favorable to Perry. He accused the D.A. of witness tampering – itself a felony – and O'Connell and Broden took Fugitt's affidavit to District Judge Clifford Brown, asking for the case against Perry to be thrown out.

"Historically, here in Travis County, and in the state and around the country, the district attorneys have always manipulated the grand juries in favor of the cops – there is just no question about that," said civil rights lawyer Jim Harrington, who has observed the workings of the D.A.'s Office since the 1970s."That was particularly true, I know for sure, here in Travis County.

So perhaps Ervin and O'Connell's complaints about access to the grand jury work on two levels. For those unfamiliar with how the process works – almost everyone – they may sound like persuasive evidence of misconduct, or serve as talking points for police backers in the way that partisan media outlets provide arguments for their viewers to reiterate.

'What' a grand jury..' ? seriously ? Is your target audience 3rd graders?

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