March 25, 2005
Countering The Rhetoric On Opening Grand Jury Records
Armchair Quarterbacking? No, Accountability
In the end, rather than trekking to Salem yesterday, we simply listened to the audio feed of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on SB 301, which among other things would set procedures for unsealing grand jury records in cases of use of deadly force by police officers.
Today's Oregonian article on the hearing includes mentions of the bits we were going to write about, so we'll use that as our reference point.
"It becomes a Court TV critics bill," said Deschutes County District Attorney Michael Dugan. "I think the armchair quarterback is going to have too much opportunity to second-guess and call for more debate and questions rather than serve the public's interest."
...
"Inquests are akin to public lynchings of the police officer," [Daryl Garrettson, a lawyer for the Oregon Council of Police Associations] said, adding that they publicly humiliate officers.
We cite these two quotes because they feed into our criticisms of last year's public inquest into the shooting death of James Jahar Perez, which we revisited last week.
The second-guessing feared by Michael Dugan in the first quote above, to some of us, actually is a matter of ensuring proper accountability.
As we've argued repeatedly in the Perez case, if Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk handled the grand jury in the same manner in which he conducted the inquest, there's a very real argument to be made that he set out to skew the presentation of the evidence away from indicting the officers involved. This is precisely why we believe the grand jury records in that case should be unsealed.
Which brings us directly to Daryl Garrettson in the second quote above. Anyone who actually viewed and/or listened to the entire Perez inquest could not possibly have considered it to be a public lynching of either Jason Sery or Sean Macomber.
In fact, our entire argument about that inquest -- and therefore, theoretically, the grand jury in the case as well -- is that the District Attorney may well have tried to insulate and protect the officers from any outcome which would reflect poorly upon them. Hence, not introducing the presence of Perez' cell phone (which may have been, as stupid as this would have been, what he was reaching for). Hence, utilizing expert witnesses who have a history of finding rationalizations for officer use of force.
So that's our warning on the story of SB 301 and its provisions to enable the opening of grand jury records. Critics of the bill will call it second-guessing, and use emotionally-charged terms like "lynching". We call it what it is: Proper accountability of both our police officers and our district attorneys.