The Sunday Chron ran an opinion piece from a man who recently served on a Harris County grand jury. He has harsh words about the process. Recall that grand juries determine who goes to trial and who does not, so they play a tremendous role in the criminal justice system, but they do not reflect the demographics of the county so can contribute to a biased judicial process.
Thanks to years of struggle, Americans of all backgrounds can vote in Harris County, as they can across the country. Poll taxes and literacy tests, which were both blatant efforts by the white majority to limit the right of minorities to vote, are a thing of the past. But while extending voting rights to all citizens has largely been a success, the right to serve on a Harris County grand jury is a throwback to our segregated past. In Harris County, it is little more than a clever way for the white Republican majority to limit minority and Democratic Party representation on grand juries.
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By fostering an organization — the grand jury - that exists in the shadows of our legal system, the power elite effectively maintains a segregated grand jury system. By using a system that closely resembles the old spoils system, the winning political party gets to select who will serve as a grand juror.
The root of the problem, he argues, is that Harris County grand jurors volunteer, and are then selected in a process that involves district court judges. The resulting composition is not only biased, but unlikely to result in the deliberation necessary to ensure just outcomes:
When the grand jurors, the prosecutors and the judges generally share the same world view, there is little room for dissent. Good and bad may not be limited to what the law books state, but may include political animus. The grand jury could be used as a weapon to viciously pursue and destroy political opponents. Fair-minded grand jurors may be coerced into silence because of their own political self-interest or out of fear of being held in contempt by the judge they serve.
He suggests that Harris County adopt a random process to assign people to grand jurors much like is done at the federal level.
