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View Full Version : Cali bans use of Grand Juries in police shooting cases.



TR675
08-12-2015, 12:39 PM
http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-brown-grand-juries-20150811-story.html

Basis is the failure to indict in Ferguson, etc. Goal (stated) is transparency. The article does not discuss the procedure Cali plans to use instead.

I do believe I would not care to be a police officer in California.

voodoo_man
08-12-2015, 01:07 PM
Lol wut?

LSP552
08-12-2015, 01:16 PM
Evidence doesn't matter in these cases. They want the officer arrested and charged, and then have it play out in court. They don't make enought money for me to set foot in Cal again.

LittleLebowski
08-12-2015, 01:22 PM
Next: cops lose voting rights in CA.

Paul
08-12-2015, 01:25 PM
I wonder how that's going to hold up to a constitutional challenge. I don't know about Cali case law, but I don't see filing felony criminal citation to circumvent a grand jury standing up to 5th amendment challenge.

HCM
08-12-2015, 01:53 PM
I wonder how that's going to hold up to a constitutional challenge. I don't know about Cali case law, but I don't see filing felony criminal citation to circumvent a grand jury standing up to 5th amendment challenge.

I agree re: the 5th Ammendment due process clause, I just feel sorry for the poor bastard who'll be the test case. I would hope PORAC is taking this to court ASAP.

TR675
08-12-2015, 02:12 PM
Lol wut?

I'm busy and not thinking or typing in complete sentences. There is a logic there though.

Re: constitutional concerns, the Fifth Amendment's right to a grand jury in "capital" or "infamous" crimes has not been incorporated against the states, so if a prosecution takes place in California state courts the prosecutors can indict through some other method and that's copacetic as far as the US Constitution is concerned.

My initial thought: what this is likely to do (and was likely intended to do) is put tremendous political pressure on the prosecuting attorneys, who now will have to take the full brunt of the blame for refusing to indict an officer the mob wants to see crucified. They won't be able to "hide" behind the grand jury process anymore.

Kukuforguns
08-12-2015, 03:03 PM
Prosecuting a police officer in California - like most jurisdictions - is largely a political decision. The grand jury does not really alter the landscape. As TR675 states, it will remove some of the cover the DA's office has when it elects not to prosecute. Currently, prosecutors can present a weak case to the grand jury and then blame the grand jury when the grand jury no bills it. This protects the DA's office from the political pressure ("Hey, it's the grand jury's fault, we tried") and minimizes the tension between the DA's office and police. That's gone. But this cover is not usually needed. For example, in the Christopher Dorner case, the DA has refused/failed to prosecute officers who in two incidents shot at vehicles they erroneously believed were Dorner's - despite the OIG's report that no reasonable officer would have used deadly force. There's no public outrage (for whatever reason) and so the DA has no political reason to prosecute. The new law changes the DA's cost/benefit analysis some, but not a lot. Since it's political, the truth remains: officers involved in justified use of force incidents will be prosecuted when it's politically advantageous and officers involved in unjustified uses of force incidents are unlikely to be prosecuted where there is no public pressure to do so. Sucks on both ends.

45dotACP
08-12-2015, 03:10 PM
My question is this: Do the authors of this ban think it will reduce the number of riots after a justified shooting of a 220lb "unarmed" teenager? Or will it increase them? I do wonder...

K.O.A.M.
08-12-2015, 03:16 PM
I think they run the risk of the first time they do this of either a 5th or 14th Amendment due process challenge being raised successfully. When you legally treat some citizens different from others when it comes to the criminal charging process, it doesn't pass the smell test.

Now, if they wanted to ban grand juries for all crimes other than capital ones, they could do that. They just can't ban them for some people and not for others.

LtDave
08-12-2015, 09:36 PM
This really won't change much, at least in L.A. County. The vast majority of criminal cases are filed with an Information and then a preliminary hearing. In almost 30 years, I think I only did one case via grand jury. Very different from the feds.

BehindBlueI's
08-12-2015, 10:29 PM
Sure different then here, where by law every Police Action goes to a Grand Jury no matter the circumstances. Shoot a guy who's actively shooting into a bus full of nuns? Grand Jury for you to answer for Murder.

Erick Gelhaus
08-13-2015, 04:52 AM
Like LtDave mentioned it won't change much. Criminal grand juries are relatively rare here.

OIS investigations will go to the DA's Office for review, unless the move to send all of them to the State Attorney Generals' Office gains traction. Were the DA to file charges, there would be a preliminary hearing to determine whether or not the involved go to trial.

There is a peripheral movement to resurrect coroner inquests under the guise of transparency. LA Times did recent article on it.

TGS
08-13-2015, 09:47 AM
I'm sort of dumbfounded by you Cali LEOs who appear to be defending it.

Okay, maybe in practice it won't change much....

....but you're still okay with your codified legal rights as a subsection of society being different?

Kukuforguns
08-13-2015, 02:01 PM
I'm sort of dumbfounded by you Cali LEOs who appear to be defending it.

Okay, maybe in practice it won't change much....

....but you're still okay with your codified legal rights as a subsection of society being different?

I'm not a LEO. I don't see anyone defending the law. I see several people saying its theater that won't change much of anything.

Kukuforguns
08-13-2015, 04:07 PM
Here's a blog regarding the new law with the deepest analysis I've seen so far. http://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/08/13/menckens-ghost-right-problem-wrong-solution/

LSP552
08-13-2015, 08:52 PM
Color me not surprised that a Criminal Defense blog is not in favor of the Grand Jury.

In LA, most police shootings go before a grand jury, but that depends on the individual jurisdiction. The decision to GJ or not rests with the individual District Attorney.

LtDave
08-13-2015, 09:27 PM
In LA County the DA's Office has a roll out team that responds to all OIS to conduct their own independent review. In a "good" shoot, the DA issues a letter explaining why the shooting was justified and no criminal charges are appropriate. How they managed that with those Dorner shootings, I don't know. Pretty rare to use subpoenas in LA as well, since we rarely used the Grand Jury in day to day investigations. Virtually everything I sought for investigative purposes was done via search warrants. LA County DA was also very hesitant to charge people with conspiracy. Never figured out why that was.