Policy & Practice December 2017

GRAND JURY continued from page 13

very well-equipped to join forces with law enforcement to ensure the responses are de-escalated as often as possible and those involved can be supported longer term. 8. Increased public awareness about criminal grand juries. There needs to be a strong push here, including prosecutors and detectives speaking about their work to the public they serve. This education would also include the courts publishing and posting data similar to what I was able to find so easily on the Internet, including how often criminal indictments result in plea bargains instead of jury trials, and the related patterns and trends by poverty level and race. 9. Use criminal indictments as data for preventive human services. It’s one thing to punish felons and separate them from the society. But it’s another to use aggregated data to support investing in neighborhoods needing to break out of the chronic cycles being identified. Instead of bringing constant patrol cars or a vigilante to a neighborhood with a youth loitering problem, bring a ball field or basketball court, employ- ment center, or volunteer center. 10. Changing the narrative about crime and criminals. As long as we depersonalize what goes on in poor and minority areas—or respond to it with fear translated to some form of putative anger—we won’t succeed in helping all Americans achieve their potential, or at least have a fair shake at doing so. Using communication research to reframe the conversa- tion about “weatherproofing” these neighborhoods and families is the work at hand. This experience and reflections mark the beginning of related strategies we’ll be advancing at APHSA. I can’t stop empathizing with those voices: Mom, Zac, the Responsible Family, the Phone and Metal Pipe Pals, the Off-Duty Guard, and even the Bird of Prey. And I can’t stopwanting to cut down on howmany Grand Jury Ones we need.

many of you have better and more ideas than these: 1. A grand jury attorney. If our grand jury had our own legal counsel as a nonvoting member, they would have called out the above-mentioned prosecutor strategies, which would have the effect of limiting them in the first hand. They would have also reinforced the probable cause rules we applied for each count that sometimes were unclear to us as laypersons. Finally, they would have provided the sort of closing guidance that Danny provided us. 2. Time to process and request more evidence. There are rules for how many days a prosecutor can take to build a case into a request for indictment. How about rules for giving a grand jury the time they typically need to deliberate and vote on a complex case? We had the same amount of limited time for all our cases, regardless of howmuch evidence we heard or howmany counts we were voting on. 3. Grand jury and foreperson training. How about a full-day training orientation for new grand juries, including some observed role play and coaching on deliberating and voting? This training would be followed up on periodically—maybe every week or two—to check on how the grand jury was operating. When we were told ours was working well, we were also told that other juries were dysfunctional. 4. Increase the number of required votes for indictment. When you have 23 jurors and only need 12 for an indictment based on a probable cause test, it’s nearly impossible NOT to get them. For the more contro- versial cases we heard, they would garner 14 to 16 votes, but still move along as if we had voted unani- mously. So, set the bar at 15 instead of the simple majority of 12. 5. Independent review of plea bargains. Why not have negotiated plea bargains reviewed by an inde- pendent judge who has to approve them in light of the grand jury record? This would serve to expand

the role of grand juries so we could easily have recorded advice on the overall strength and seriousness of the charges within a case, and the strength of the evidence we heard, rather than voting and disappearing. 6. Minimum sentencing laws and compensation of public defenders. I’ve put two ideas together as they both are root causes for the trend toward plea bargaining that were not in the minds of the Constitutional framers. These laws and reward structures need to be researched for their impact on due process under the Sixth Amendment. I would add here that rules might be needed to limit “trumping up” charges that might be technically correct but not appropriate. 7. Patrol and respond to 911 calls with caseworker support. Stepping further outside the grand jury room, I’m aware that in some major cities this very strategy is being tried for homeless populations or calls to the police involving domestic violence. Human services professionals are especially victims of abuse. Especially the childrenwemet, who at timeswere shrugging off what we could hardly hear. Both the accused and the victimswe came to knowoften brought us pain and sorrow— the “knowing” so eloquently understood by my friend. But they also brought us hope and inspiration—

Policy&Practice   December 2017 36