The decision by a Denver District Court judge to seal a grand jury’s report on a series of Lower Downtown assaults and a police detective’s actions is profoundly disappointing.
Not only did District Judge Sheila Rappaport overrule the grand jurors’ intent to make the report public, she sealed her own order explaining why.
What’s to hide? What is the public to think about this bizarre conclusion to these troubling incidents?
Apparently nothing, because that is the sum of the information citizens are getting.
That is unacceptable, and we were glad to see that Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey intends to appeal the judge’s decision.
The convening of the grand jury stems from events surrounding what has been portrayed as a series of racially motivated beatings in LoDo in the summer and fall of 2009.
In June, a judge dismissed a criminal case against one of the men accused of perpetrating the beatings after allegations of questionable police conduct surfaced.
The judge said Denver police Detective Paul Baca misrepresented the testimony of two witnesses in the case against Aaron “Stacks” Puller.
In fact, Judge Edward Brofin’s language was quite harsh. He said the warrant used to arrest Puller included “false statements” and went on to describe Baca’s sworn statement as having had a “reckless disregard for the truth.”
And earlier in the year charges had been reduced against seven mugging suspects after a victim in the case said Baca urged him to claim he had suffered a broken tooth in the attack when that was not true.
The grand jury reportedly was investigating Baca’s actions, and given the circumstances, rightly so.
Brian Maass, from CBS4, was the first to report last week that the grand jury had concluded its work and issued a report on the matter.
Maass reported, citing law enforcement sources, that the grand jury did not ask that Baca be criminally charged.
Among the powers that grand juries have is the ability to issue reports on matters before them. Sometimes, these reports will be a critical assessment of events.
Storey, the prosecutor who worked with the grand jury in this case, told The Post he knows the content of the grand jury report and of the judge’s order to seal it, but declined to discuss them.
However, he did tell us that this is the first time in his career that a judge had sealed a grand jury report.
“That has never happened to me before,” he said.
“The preferred outcome is that we make the report public, and that is why we are appealing.”
We heartily agree with Storey’s decision to fight to have the report released. We hope the decision is reversed upon appeal so the grand jury’s voice on this matter can be heard.
At the very least, citizens deserve to know why the judge found this report so objectionable or damaging that it had to be kept under wraps.
