(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



The Indictment Integrity Project- Executive Summary, (with poll) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-05-18

Note: The addition of a staff position should be possible administratively-since Departments of Justice are in the executive branch - without legislation to wrangle or be tripped up via lobbying by vested interests.

Grand jury secrecy would be maintained, but a significant, potentially vital addition - one of current knowledge, but focused on foundational principles of the rights and protections of the accused - would be embedded in the process. Prosecutors would be working in front of someone who could call in the presiding judge for clarifications that normal grand jurors wouldn’t know to question. Someone fully aware of the line between lawful action and misconduct. One familiar with the rules of evidence.

This seems like a simple concept, but it’s a path to fundamentally reform, refine, and re-balance grand jury proceedings while leaving the secrecy of the grand jury process intact- which has been an intractable problem and the single greatest objection to significant grand jury reform.

It brings knowledge and oversight into play exactly where it needs to be as a way to curb the essentially unrestricted power of prosecutors before naive grand jurors. It could ensure that foundational principles and professional standards are honored from the very beginning of the criminal justice process.

Those accused in the process are people, not ham sandwiches*, and improper, unsound filing of criminal charges does immense and irreparable harm to them. As well as imposing enormous moral and fiscal costs on society.

Such an addition would make zero impact on honest, competent prosecutors. They would carry on as before, seamlessly. But inexperienced prosecutors or those with habits of overreach or misconduct would find themselves facing a knowledgeable staff presence and in need of an adjustment in their approach to grand jury presentations.

In fact, it should be possible to reasonably gauge the confidence of prosecutors in their practice by their reaction to the proposed change. The ones objecting most strongly to the addition of proctors should be the ones most in need of oversight.

Significant alterations in the volume of indictments handed down would be an indicator of how badly in need of oversight or further training the district had previously been.

Many low population areas have grand juries that meet weekly, which gives the opportunity to spread the workload across fewer individuals; in the same way that courts originally had circuit judges who made rounds, the state could employ circuit proctors to be present on the days that local grand juries meet. Adjacent counties could be scheduled on sequential days.

And based on the same rationale that professional responsibility boards are drawn from a pool of qualified individuals from different areas-to prevent local conflicts or favoritism- proctors should be hired by the states- at that level- to cover areas where they have no ties. This would provide a consistent baseline of knowledgeable and uninvolved people to guarantee that grand jury proceedings were conducted according to best practices and that the integrity of their indictments would be significantly improved.

For example: Oregon has 36 counties, (27 judicial districts) — the majority rural/low population — the state could hire or assign fewer than ten proctors to cover the entire state. It’s probable that the initial costs of these additional positions would be far outweighed by the fiscal savings in reductions of unsound charging decisions. A true investment injustice. To say nothing of the expanded protection of the accused-bringing the system closer to the ideals set out by America’s Founders.

Given Oregon’s current 6th Amendment crisis - having only approximately one third of the indigent defense attorneys needed to keep up with the volume of cases - Oregon would be an ideal place to run a pilot program to evaluate the effects of adding proctors to grand jury staff. In California, Orange County would probably be a productive pilot area.

This modest investment by the state at the foundation of the criminal justice process would be a long step towards fulfilling the state’s moral obligation for oversight of those exercising the State’s power.

Proctors should be drawn from a pool of experienced defense attorneys, perhaps retired judges or law professors. Those formerly involved at the federal level would be ideal for spreading professional standards out to the peripheries of the country. A rotating pool is another option.

The United States has had a sharply increasing carceral population for decades. We currently lead the world in per capita incarceration. Conviction integrity and innocence projects have demonstrated how badly the current system can fail. Adding proctors to grand jury staff is a sensible and extremely cost effective way to add a reasonable check to ensure the integrity of indictments while both streamlining and strengthening the criminal justice system.

The floor is open for analysis and critique.

*Former New York state Chief Judge Sol Wachtler famously remarked that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” The data suggests he was barely exaggerating: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/18/2169415/-The-Indictment-Integrity-Project-Executive-Summary-with-poll

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/