(Calif.) Gov. Brown OKs nation's 1st ban on grand juries in police shootings
Source: San Jose Mercury News
Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday making California the first state in the nation to ban the use of grand juries to decide whether police officers should face criminal charges when they kill people in the line of duty.
The ban, which will go into effect Jan. 1, comes after grand juriess in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, made controversial decisions in secret hearings last year not to bring charges against officers who killed unarmed black men, sparking protests across the country. Calls for transparency also have come amid national concerns about disparate treatment of blacks and other racial minorities when encounters with cops turned deadly in Baltimore, Cincinnati and South Carolina.
"What the governor's decision says is, he gets it -- the people don't want secrecy when it comes to officer-involved shootings," said retired judge and former San Jose independent police auditor LaDoris Cordell, the first African-American appointed as a judge in Northern California and a key supporter of the bill. "We're not trying to get more officers indicted. We're saying, 'whatever you decide, do it in the open.''
... But the California District Attorneys Association and the California Police Chiefs Association opposed the ban, saying the grand jury should be preserved as an option.
Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_28621966/gov-brown-oks-nations-1st-ban-grand-juries
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)Best Governor we've had in a million years.
elias49
(4,259 posts)I thought all liberals were like lepers or something!
moonscape
(4,674 posts)Rod Beauvex
(564 posts)Remember being old didn't stop senile St. Ronnie.
moonscape
(4,674 posts)valerief
(53,235 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Bring this all out into the light of day, so there's much more accountability
and fairness to the 'criminal justice' process, such that when cops gun down
unarmed citizens, the decision to indict/not-indict is an open book for all
to see.
I hope this helps cops not be so damned trigger-happy.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)bbgrunt
(5,281 posts)GGJohn
(9,951 posts)Hopefully this will catch on nationwide.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)dogknob
(2,431 posts)Vincardog
(20,234 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)It's not like the department will spend less money next year; they'll spend the same and pay the fine from a new bond issue the town quickly passes.
Vincardog
(20,234 posts)Racists Pigs cost the citizens on paper in the budget.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The poster above was saying it's been shown time & time again that taking money from the PD doesn't actually change behavior; the town just raises more revenue.
msongs
(67,455 posts)The Second Stone
(2,900 posts)Must come as a surprise to Ret. Judge John Dearman (San Francisco Superior Court) and Ret. Judge Thelton Henderson (USDC Northern District of California), both of whom were appointed to the bench a decade before Cordell.