The Texas Tribune mentions that each county determines how to put grand juries together and some use the "key man system" as opposed to a random selection process. They are critical of its use:
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Many Texas courts in larger cities rely on a so-called “key man” selection process, where judges choose a commissioner responsible for recruiting a panel of grand jurors. That method — one that is unusual nationally — was not chosen for Perry’s grand jury because the visiting judge overseeing the case comes from a part of the state where random selection is preferred.
But as the Perry case moves to trial, it is prompting questions about Texas’ quirky key man grand jury system — and whether it is time to ditch it entirely. Critics of the key man system suggest that using random selection in Perry’s case was a good defense against perceived or actual bias — and that it should be used in all Texas criminal cases.
“The difficulty is, where did the ‘key man’ come from?” asked Larry Karson, a criminal justice professor at the University of Houston-Downtown who in 2004 studied the key man system. “What is the relationship of the key man to the judge? And what is the relationship of the potential grand juror to the key man?”
Texas law allows judges in its 254 counties to decide for themselves whether to have grand jurors chosen at random or selected by a key man — a method frequently used by judges in Austin, Dallas and Houston.
It's an important question: should grand juries be selected in the same way the trial juries are selected? Will that result in a fairer process for determining who faces trial and who does not?
