{"id":9851,"date":"2015-06-21T01:25:06","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T01:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9851"},"modified":"2015-06-21T01:25:06","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T01:25:06","slug":"grand-jury-reform-arrives-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9851","title":{"rendered":"Grand jury reform arrives in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Way back when I arrived in Texas, in 1984, the newspaper where I started working had just begun an editorial campaign to change the way the state impaneled grand juries.<\/p>\n

The Jefferson County criminal justice system had come under fire over suspicions that a grand jury might have been seated to get back at political foes of a district judge. Our newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, disliked the jury commissioner system and we called for a change to select grand juries the way the state seats trial juries — using the voter registration rolls.<\/p>\n

We finally persuaded the county’s two criminal district judges to adopt a random selection method.<\/p>\n

Well, this week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law that makes it a requirement<\/em> to seat grand juries in a random method.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2015\/06\/19\/abbott-signs-grand-jury-reform-legislation\/<\/p>\n

It’s a good day for the state’s criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

As the Texas Tribune reports: “Under House Bill 2150, the state will no longer use the outdated system that lets judge-appointed commissioners pick jurors, a nationally uncommon practice that critics say is rife with potential for conflicts of interest.”<\/p>\n

The old\u00a0system allowed judges to pick jury commissioners, usually friends, to find grand jurors. It’s been called a “pick a pal” system. Friends pick friends, who then might be friends with the judge\u00a0whose court has jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

The “potential for conflicts of interest” surely did exist.<\/p>\n

I once served on a grand jury, in Randall County, that was picked\u00a0by the old method. We had an uneventful term, meeting every other week for several months. I learned a lot about my community.<\/p>\n

My participation\u00a0as a grand juror, though, all but eliminated me from consideration for a trial jury, District Attorney James Farren told us, as we then would be seen as “pro-prosecution” by defense counsel.<\/p>\n

That’s fine.<\/p>\n

But I’m still quite glad to see the Texas Legislature enact this long-needed reform, which follows the model\u00a0used in the\u00a0vast majority of other states.<\/p>\n

If a randomly selected trial jury is qualified to sentence someone to death, then a randomly selected grand jury ought to be qualified to determine whether the crime should be prosecuted in the first place.<\/p>\n\n

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Way back when I arrived in Texas, in 1984, the newspaper where I started working had just begun an editorial campaign to change the way the state impaneled grand juries. The Jefferson County criminal justice system had come under fire over suspicions that a grand jury might have been seated to get back at political … Continue reading Grand jury reform arrives in Texas<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,18],"tags":[568,1983,2006,2402,2435,2611,3599,3823,3835,4728,4910],"class_list":["post-9851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-local-news","category-state-news","tag-beaumont-enterprise","tag-grand-juries","tag-greg-abbott","tag-james-farren","tag-jefferson-county","tag-jury-commissioner","tag-pick-a-pal","tag-randall-county","tag-random-selection-method","tag-texas-tribune","tag-trial-juries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}