Bozelko column: Let’s honor Breonna Taylor and ditch grand juries

Chandra Bozelko
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Pocono Record

Columns share an author's personal perspective.


The lack of homicide charges against the three officers who executed the fateful no-knock warrant on Breonna Taylor’s Louisville apartment is just another reason why we need to rid ourselves of grand juries. Two officers were "no-billed" - meaning grand jurors returned no bill of indictment - and one Louisville officer, Brett Hankinson, was charged with wanton endangerment for discharging bullets into the wall of a neighbor’s apartment.

More than enough reason exists to dispense with them during a pandemic; packing 23 people into a small room for hours at a time is practically an invitation to the novel coronavirus to somersault through a community.

But there’s more reason to bury the grand jury. They uncheck government power and allow it to focus on someone without any due process. If you’re looking for fascism, you’ll find it in a grand jury. 

Grand juries aren’t like usual juries - petit juries - that hear evidence and argument from the government and the accused, moderated by a judge. Instead, grand juries are secret, non-adversarial - which means no one cross examines witnesses or presents testimony that might exonerate the person about to be accused - and entirely controlled by prosecutors. There’s no judge or overseer to monitor what they do.

From 2009-10, the federal Department of Justice pursued 193,000 cases. Grand juries "no billed" 11of them. That’s a win rate of 99.99%.

That’s why former Chief Judge of New York Sol Wachtler  - a judge who ended up indicted and in prison himself - saidattorneys in grand jury proceedings could indict a ham sandwich. I see very few - almost zero - ways a prosecutor can lose when he controls the rules, the witnesses and the fact-finders. I mean that - I’d like to know who sought an indictment under these conditions and still bonked.

Grand juries absolve prosecutors of responsibility. Lawyers like Daniel Cameron, the  Attorney General of Kentucky, absolve themselves by pointing to the grand jurors - who usually aren’t allowed to discuss the evidence or instructions presented to them - even though they were administrative marionettes, doing exactly what people like Cameron told them to do.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has called for the release of transcripts from the proceedings. It won’t happen. The only circumstances under which grand jury proceedings would be released to the public would be if no one was indicted. Charging just one person with a minor crime will assure that confidential grand jury testimony stays undisclosed. To unseal it might prejudice the case against Hankinson. Unless and until that wanton shooter’s case is over, including appeal, those transcripts won’t - and shouldn’t - be released. We won’t read those transcripts for years, if at all.

We can stop relying on these bodies. Connecticut andPennsylvania have done away with them entirely. Only25 states, require grand jury indictments before commencing a criminal case. Just14 states require felonies to be charged by a grand jury.

Ridding ourselves of grand juries isn’t an abolitionist move. It wouldn’t slow any prosecutorial roll; they can secure the same indictments by presenting sworn affidavits to a judge who will act as a one-person grand jury and indict with his signature.

If anything, district attorneys will probably charge and prosecute more people when grand juries flee the courthouse because they’re expensive - sometimes jurors get paid $50 per day for up to 18 months- and slow, involving multiple people over several months. Those trouble-seeking sandwiches won’t get away with any crime. Even without grand juries, the deli counter remains open; people will still get sliced and served.

We can’t shake the grand jury requirement for federal crimes; it’s enshrined in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Some states - Kentucky is one of them - include grand juries in their constitutions so amendments would be in order to extinguish these tribunals completely. It’s hard to amend a constitution but not impossible.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get as close to that goal as possible now. Our Founding Fathers designed American justice to be fair and open. Grand juries are neither.


 @ChandraBozelko and email her at