NEW YORK — For centuries, grand juries have held some of the criminal justice system’s best-kept secrets. But their private process has come under public scrutiny after recent decisions not to indict police officers in the deaths of unarmed men.
Calls for more transparency have sounded in Congress, statehouses and editorial pages, mixed with notes of caution about forswearing secrecy that can safeguard witnesses and the accused.
The debate has “been more exposed in the last three months than ever,” said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in criminal justice.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week proposed a limited lifting of the grand jury veil when police kill unarmed civilians. Next week a New York City judge will consider whether to release transcripts of a grand jury’s investigation into Eric Garner’s chokehold death.
Proposals to replace grand juries with preliminary hearings in open court, at least in some police-killing cases, have recently been floated by lawmakers in Washington and Missouri.
The prosecuting attorney in Ferguson, Mo., took the unusual step last month of letting the public read grand jury transcripts in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The DA in Albuquerque, recently said she would take a murder case against two officers to a preliminary hearing because of public frustration with the secret proceedings.
To skeptics, the closed doors can leave important questions unanswerable in a prosecutor-driven process where judges have limited involvement and defense attorneys can’t ask questions.
“Secrecy only breeds suspicion,” said New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, who has joined civil rights advocates and others in petitioning a Staten Island judge to release grand jury transcripts in the Garner case.
A judge postponed a hearing from Thursday to Feb. 5 because of schedule problems stemming from snow-related court closures this week.
Such releases are rare in New York, particularly in a case without indictments, and the legal bar is high.
But even some former prosecutors think that confidentiality can sap public confidence.
“You combat that by showing people how it really works,” said former Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman.
She has joined former Manhattan prosecutor Barbara Jones in calling for releasing grand jury transcripts when police are accused of misusing force.
Some prosecutors worry that disclosing even redacted transcripts will expose witnesses to harassment. The state district attorneys’ association is opposing the request in the Garner case.
“The notion of secrecy and privacy has a good basis in sound public policy,” said Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, the Syracuse prosecutor who is president elect of the National District Attorneys Association.
