Should the Secrets From the Eric Garner Grand Jury Be Revealed?

by Matt Stroud
12:14 PM EST February 5, 2015


More than six months after the death of Eric Garner during an encounter with police, a court hearing on Thursday will weigh the release of secret documents and transcripts produced by a grand jury that decided not to charge anyone in the case. The public release of grand jury testimony is highly unusual, and there’s still no easy answer about when the normally secret information should be unsealed.

Garner died on July 17, 2014 after a New York City Police Department officer, Daniel Pantaleo, used a chokehold and then restrained him face down on a Staten Island sidewalk with help from four other officers. Garner was declared dead on arrival at a hospital an hour later, and a video of the incident sparked protests across the country. A grand jury called by Staten Island’s district attorney started reviewing evidence in August. By December, when the jurors decided not to charge Pantaleo in Garner's death, protests erupted again. Among the reasons: a lack of transparency about why the grand jury decided not to indict.

Grand juries by definition are secret—and they are an integral part of the American justice system, traced back to the Bill of Rights: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.”

“As it was designed,” says University of Michigan law professor Eve Primus, “the grand jury is supposed serve an investigative purpose, as a screening function or a check on prosecutors who wield quite a lot of power.” States enjoy a great deal of flexibility when it comes to grand juries. While federal grand juries are mandatory, only 28 states and Washington D.C. employ some form of grand jury process. The British justice system long ago abandoned grand juries all together—its last one met in 1933.

Now critics in the U.S. are seizing on high-profile cases in which grand juries have failed to indict police for the death of unarmed black men to call the American grand jury system into question. Last week, for instance, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James told the Daily News she’s against grand juries for New York in their current form: "The secrecy in the grand jury proceeding basically breeds a lot of suspicion. We all know sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-05/should-the-secrets-from-the-eric-garner-grand-jury-be-revealed-