LETTER TO THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
IN RESPONSE TO THEIR EDITORIAL ON JULY 11, 2005
Your editorial “State of Injustice” concludes: “Absent, amid the discovery of repeated and extensive miscarriages of justice, is a sense of public outrage and shame that our justice system could be so permissive of wrong and so indifferent to right.” A careful reading of the editorial reveals, however, that there is a reason for the lack of outrage and failure to remedy the situation. All segments of the criminal justice system are culpable and would prefer to keep their part of these atrocities hidden.
When we reorganized the Grand Jury Association 2 years ago, we were first appalled, then enraged by what we found out. Innocent people by the thousands may be incarcerated by a combination of deliberate fraud, negligence, political decision and unprofessional conduct. These include prisoners who, without ever seeing a jury, were compelled to plead guilty when faced with the "scientific" evidence.
When we proposed, that as a first minimum step of remedial action, the District Attorney should be sworn when presenting his case to the Grand Jury to make sure he is not knowingly misrepresenting the facts, we were rebuffed not just by the District Attorney, but ignored by the Criminal Justice Committees of the Legislature and the Governor.
We also realized that the Grand Jury system has been prostituted and has become a tool of the prosecution rather than a shield to protect the innocent. Many former grand jurors were nothing more than shills for the prosecution serving repeatedly and others were discharged by the time they started to recognize the problems. The Criminal Judges even prevented the Grand Juries to prepare reports of their findings so that subsequent juries could learn from such reports and not have to start ignorantly each 90 days.
The Grand Jury Association is now dormant for several reasons. Many members may feel guilty of having participated in sending thousands to prison by believing fraudulent crime lab reports. Others have been silenced by their relationship to the Judges and the District Attorney, which caused them to be appointed in the first place. Mostly we realize, however, that we are up against an entire flawed Criminal Justice System. Few people have the courage and conviction to face such odds. So we just live with the shame, because we know, better than most, what we should be ashamed of.
