Former judge Amanda Williams has been indicted for allegedly lying to a grand jury, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Bill Rankin reports. Williams came to national attention after This American Life reported that "she behaved in a tyrannical manner and locked up some drug court defendants indefinitely," Rankin writes.
Who knew? Texas is the last state in the country to have a "pick-a-pal" system in which grand jurors are selected through a list of individuals prepared by an acquaintance chosen by a local judge. Texas legislators have approved bills to end this method of selecting grand juries, the Houston Chronicle's Brian Rosenthal reports.
The difference between the state House and state Senate versions is a provision requiring courts empaneling grand juries to consider '"the county's demographics related to race, ethnicity, sex and age,'" Rosenthal further reports.
Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg won a Pulitzer for revealing the problems with Texas' method of selecting grand juries, including "instances of judges' friends sitting on multiple grand juries and potential conflicts of interest going undetected, such as allowing former police officers to hear a case in which a lawman is accused of a crime."
The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press' Tom Isler reports on two lawsuits that have been brought in Missouri and New York to challenge secrecy over the grand juries that ultimately chose not to indict police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. "The two cases illustrate how strong the secrecy protections are for grand juries and how difficult it can be for the public to have any meaningful oversight of the process to guard against potential abuse," Isler notes. He hopes the courts rule in favor of the lawsuits seeking more transparency so the public can have a "a richer picture of the two grand jury investigations that sparked protests worldwide."
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is facing a grand jury probe on, well, whether she violated the secrecy rules of yet another grand jury, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Angela Couloumbis and Craig R. McCoy report. Kane has acknowledged that ther office released information to the Philadelphia Daily News about a grand jury case that her Republican predecessors ran looking into alleged financial improprieties of J. Whyatt Mondesire, the former president of the Philadelphia NAACP. Kane argues that "that Pennsylvania law has no statute that binds an attorney general to grand jury secrecy. The state law establishing investigative grand juries makes no mention of the attorney general. Rather it imposes secrecy rules on the participants in the jury room, and it names them — 'juror, attorney, interpreter, stenographer.'"
A member of the grand jury that decided against indicting Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown is seeking to have the gag order on talking about the grand jury process lifted, alleging that the prosecutor Robert McCulloch handled the case differently than hundreds of other cases presented to the grand jury, The Huffington Post's Ryan J. Reilly reports. ACLU of Missouri Legal Director said in a statement that grand jury secrecy can be outweighed by a juror's First Amendment rights "'in cases where the prosecuting attorney has purported to be transparent,"' Reilly further reports.
A Pennsylvania judge presiding over an investigating grand jury squelched a subpoena issued to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Brad Bumstead, that paper reports. The strangest part of the situation is that the judge says the subpoena--which had his signature on it-- was issued without his knowledge: "Judge William R. Carpenter, who is supervising the grand jury and whose signature appears on the subpoena issued Wednesday night, told the Trib he did not know about the subpoena until he talked with a reporter."
The judge has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate whether information has been leaked by the Attorney General's Office.
Several media-law experts told the Trib that Pennsylvania has a strong law that shields reporters from having to reveal their confidential sources.
The Legal Intelligencer's Max Mitchell reports on the defenses being raised by the three ex-Penn State administrators charged with covering up Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse: "The defendants, former university President Graham Spanier, ex-vice president for business and finance Gary Schultz and ex-athletic director Tim Curley, contended in the filings that what they view as [ex-GC Cynthia] Baldwin's murky role led to deprivation of counsel, violations of grand jury secrecy and breach of attorney-client privilege."
According to The Legal, the defendants also argue, when Baldwin accompanied them to their grand jury appearances, that Baldwin had a conflict of interest and that the prosecutors committed misconduct by not ensuring Baldwin was not conflicted. Baldwin later testified against them in grand jury proceedings.
The Legal Intelligencer's Max Mitchell reports that the murky role of Penn State's general counsel during grand jury proceedings could affect the efforts of prosecutors to hold three university administrators accountable for their actions regarding convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. "If three ex-Penn State administrators facing charges stemming from failing to properly deal with reports of child sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky are found to have appeared before a grand jury without proper advice of counsel, their testimony could be incurably affected and even tossed, several white-collar defense attorneys have said," Mitchell writes. Minutes of the grand jury proceedings show that Cynthia Baldwin said she was attending the grand jury proceedings on behalf of Penn State, but the defendants, former university President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley, argue they thought Baldwin was their counsel.
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