California Gov Bans Grand Juries In Fatal Shootings by Police
Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday making California the first state in the nation to ban the use of grand juries to decide whether police officers should face criminal charges when they kill people in the line of duty.
The ban, which will go into effect next year, comes after grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, made controversial decisions in secret hearings last year not to bring charges against officers who killed unarmed black men, sparking protests across the country. Calls for transparency also have come amid national concerns about disparate treatment of blacks and other racial minorities when encounters with cops turned deadly in Baltimore, Cincinnati and South Carolina.
"What the governor's decision says is, he gets it – the people don't want secrecy when it comes to officer-involved shootings," said retired judge and former San Jose independent police auditor LaDoris Cordell, the first African-American appointed as a judge in Northern California and a key supporter of the bill. "We're not trying to get more officers indicted. We're saying, 'Whatever you decide, do it in the open.'"
The governor Tuesday also signed a bill by state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, that makes it clear it is legal to take a photograph or video of a police officer while the officer is in a public place or in a place the person photographing the action has a right to be. Both bills are the first of a wave of Ferguson-inspired criminal justice reforms now making their way through the Legislature.
The grand jury ban accomplishes officially what many California district attorneys, including in Santa Clara and Los Angeles counties, are doing already – deciding themselves whether to bring criminal charges against police officers rather than presenting evidence in a closed hearing to a grand jury and letting the panel decide. Only one other state – Connecticut – bans the use of grand juries for all criminal indictments, but that taboo dates back to the early 1980s and has nothing to do with the current protests over the treatment of people of color by police.
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