Can a jury convict an innocent man?
Are you reading the same opinion?
This element may be dicta, but it does contemplate that there is no requirement to present inculpatory evidence. Such a requirement would be absurd in the event of ongoing investigations, as made clear by **Bricker **in post #69.
“To the contrary, requiring the prosecutor to present exculpatory as well as inculpatory evidence would alter the grand jury’s historical role, transforming it from an accusatory to an adjudicatory body.”
That sentence does not mean what you think it means. Nor would a requirement that a DA present* sufficient inculpatory evidence to get a indictment* mean he’d have to present it all.
That sentence - at least that portion of it - doesn’t mean anything. It is simply distinguishing two forms of evidence.
It’s not central to the holding of the opinion itself, but it does express an opinion. I parse the sentence as follows:[ul]
[li]requiring the prosecutor to present exculpatory evidence would alter the grand jury’s historical role …[/li][li]requiring the prosecutor to present inculpatory evidence would alter the grand jury’s historical role …[/li][/ul]
In other words, in the grand jury phase, there is no requirement to present surrounding any set of evidence.
What do you think it means? A requirement that a DA present sufficient inculpatory evidence to get an indictment would be absurd. Any time an indictment was not returned would lead to accusation of failure to adhere to the requirement. That’s a stupid outcome.
I think we are arguing the same thing here. My reading is also that there is no requirement either way.
I concur.
Who cares? There’s nothing in Williams that allows me to wear a bow tie.
And yet, here I am, wearing one.
The question is: is there anything in Williams, or any case, that imposes a duty to present all, or some necessary fraction, of inculpatory evidence?
Yes, the only advocate for the must-present-some-minimum-sufficient-inculpatory evidence is DrDeth, and he’s stubborn about admitting error.
True, I am.
:o
(Bolding mine)
The primary reason for the proceedings being secret is that both witnesses and targets of grand jury investigations do not have the constitutional rights they would have in a trial.
Here are just a few examples, note that my complete experience is as member of a Federal grand jury, I am not in any way a lawyer.
[ul]
[li]There is no right to counsel for targets or witnesses, there is no counter view point presented.[/li][li]Hearsay evidence is admissible before a grand jury.[/li][li]Questions are asked by jury members who are not lawyers and there is no judge present to protect a witnesses rights.[/li][li]There is no right to claim 5th amendment protections.[/li][li]All evidence and claims are offered by the AUSA, they are the only credentialed person in the process (well them and their aids)[/li][/ul]
As neither the target nor the witnesses have any of the basic protections of due process it would be insanely damaging to release most grand jury testimony. While there may be an argument that the GJ system does not function in it’s intended purpose of protecting against malicious prosecution and kangaroo courts, making the proceedings a part of the public record would turn them into a far greater tool to accomplish the same goals of a typical kangaroo court.
While the OP was referencing a very tragic situation that demonstrates real problems with our justice system the outrage over the GJ returning a “no bill” in this case was an example of it functioning as intended. While in the state systems, where you do not have a right to a GJ as you do in the federal system some state prosecutors may use the system to deflect the blame of a decision to not move forward with a trial this is the function of a GJ.
Had the state moved forward with a trial it would have been a kangaroo court. With the massive amount of errors that culminated in the horrid and unneeded death there would have never have been a conviction in a criminal trial.
The “facts” that were being alluded to as being withheld would not have mattered. No matter if they were about the officers previous mental evaluations or inconsistencies around the timeline of events in the police records.
The “reasonable person” construct would have been used, and as the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they would have very strong evidence that directly linked the shooting to malice. Without this there is no chance that the state could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a “reasonable person” would have not feared for their safety in this case. There was a call of a person pointing a gun in a public place, when the officers arrived they say someone with what looked like a firearm when the subject lifted their shirt.
The reality is that the ONLY way we will reduce these types of tragic events is to change the way we police. The current system where police sweep in with aggressive action and with loud direct orders that expect rational responses completely ignores the reality of the fight or flight system. When normal people let alone someone with either drug induced, culturally induced or medical conditions are exposed to this they are even more likely to not act rationally. Once the fight-or-flight response is invoked we resort to our “monkey brains” which reduces our ability to make any type of rational decision. This leads to these forms of escalations.
The fact that current policies lead to more mistakes and more escalations of force is the problem. You will never be able to establish that a reasonable person in the officers situation would not fear for their life in the way this tragic event unfolded. So either we have to gut the rights of the officers to protect their own lives or we need to change how we police to reduce these deaths. No amount of malicious prosecution, kangaroo courts or lynch mobs will prevent these deaths.
This is what I was talking about in my original responses. We need to fix how we police, and how we as citizens feel we are being policed to reduce these tragic and unneeded escalations.
Calling for a gutting of our rights of self defense, or protections against malicious prosecution will not move us forward.
That is what makes me sad about the base ignorance of the system and the misdirected anger. We have half a century of militarized police and centuries of institutional racism and those or the correct targets of the outrage in this and many other recent cases.
That said I will fully admit that would actually prefer it if the right to a grand jury was incorporated against the states, but I do not think that that view colors the points made here.
I should also note that the civil case against the state in this case does have a much greater chance of being successful. This is the current and correct way to hold the state accountable for this wrongful death. It also has a far better chance of effecting change of our currently broken system than gutting the right to self defense or the grand jury system does too. The problem is the way we police in this situation. While there are lots of recent examples of individual officers who need to be held to criminal sanction the problem here is with the governments policy and policing and not the individual actors. In this particular case, as stated above the individual fitness of the officers for their jobs is also a systemic issue but as the bar would be a reasonable person or reasonable officer standard the facts around their personal situation is irrelevant to the GJ’s decision to return with a No Bill decision in relation to a criminal trial.
Fifth Amendment protections absolutely apply during grand jury proceedings. They just don’t apply as to third parties; that is, a police officer can testify about your incriminating statements even if you don’t have to.
Ga, I off the end of that bullet point trying to fix my super poor spelling, it should of read as follows.
I meant to say that you cannot just refuse to answer any questions or to take the stand which is afforded in criminal cases in this portion of the 5th amendment
You cannot refuse to take the stand and while you can raise a 5th amendment complaint against specific questions you cannot just refuse to answer all questions. This would not fly in a trial and was the difference I was intending to communicate.
Cite: WARNING PDF
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2556&context=faculty_scholarship
The defendant can always refuse to take the stand, in a grand jury proceeding or anywhere else. The different rules for grand jury proceedings apply to non-defendant witnesses who may incriminate themselves.
I don’t want to get into the depths of this side topic because even if I conceded it does not change the main point of the release of this testimony being potentially very damaging and potentially violating a target and or witness and their right to due process while also removing most of the protections against malicious prosecution by the state which is the main reason for a GJ.
So I will conceded in an effort to not fully derail the OP’s thread.
This doesn’t make sense to me.
As I understand it, there is no official “defendant” in a GJ proceeding, which are pretty open-ended, and anyone who testifies - or anyone who doesn’t - could turn out to be the “defendant” if the GJ decides to indict them.
If that’s correct, then how do you apply the different rules to defendants versus non-defendants?
In reference to the grand jury referenced in the OP the correct term for the person whom will be charged if the jury returns a true bill is a “target”. You are correct that there is no “defendant” in a grand jury proceeding as there is no criminal charge until after the GJ’s decision.
That said things get more complicated if the grand jury is doing discovery. This is why I conceded as the difference between a target and a witness would require it’s own thread.
This is where we’d need to start talking about a specific state, or the federal system, because there are dramatic differences – as I mentioned above, New York confers transactional immunity on grand jury witnesses but also grants an absolute right to the target of a grand jury to testify. This means that a target wishing to exercise his right must waive immunity.
And to clarify for us non-lawyers.
Without “transactional immunity” a subsequent criminal prosecution can use the information they derived from compelled testimony while granting 5th amendment compatible immunity but the prosecution has the burden of proving affirmatively that evidence proposed to be used is derived from a legitimate source wholly independent of the compelled testimony.
“Transactional immunity” provides protection from such derived prosecution.
The state can use this lower standard of immunity as a discovery tool with the very real threat of being jailed under contempt for not answering if the laws do not provide the greater protection as NY offers. In states with lesser protection the “non-transactional” immunity can be used to compel testimony.
As grand jury witnesses are the only party who is free to break the secrecy about the process I have no way to verify the validity of the claims but it has been claimed that this has been used to get around no-snitching situations involving large groups.