A grand jury in Harris County, Texas is investigating problems with roadside blood alcohol testing vans operated by the Houston Police Department. Months ago, former HPD supervisor Amanda Culbertson disclosed that the so-called BAT vans were wildly unreliable. After it became clear that the inaccurate test results were leading to unjust convictions, Culbertson resigned from the department in disgust.
After Culbertson continued to speak out, the Harris County District Attorney’s office retaliated against her by cancelling a county contract with her company – in effect, firing her.
Recounts the Houston Chronicle:
Harris County commissioners, at the recommendation of District Attorney Pat Lykos‘ staff, canceled a contract with a Lone Star College laboratory that has performed breathalyzer analysis for the sheriff’s office for decades. The lab just happened to have hired Culbertson, who had resigned her HPD position. Defense attorneys charged that the move was payback by the DA for Culbertson’s undermining of DWI prosecutions.
In the latest twist, Harris County’s 185th criminal court grand jury, an institution normally controlled by prosecutors, has apparently turned its investigative focus on the DA’s handling of the tainted evidence and possibly issues of retaliation against Culbertson. The grand jury not only barred prosecutors from being present during its questioning of witnesses, but also called three assistant district attorneys as well as a former prosecutor who is now a judge to testify about their handling of DWI cases.
When the Grand Jury sought to hear from Culbertson, and from former County Prosecutor Brent Mayr, the D.A. sent two assistant prosecutors to monitor their testimony. The Grand Jury Foreman ordered the DA’s representatives to leave. When that directive was ignored, the Foreman instructed the Baliff to place them under arrest if they didn’t leave.
District Attorney Lykos unsuccessfully sought a court order compelling the grand jury to allow her minions to monitor the proceedings. When that effort failed, the DA’s office exploited a back-channel to obtain official transcripts of the grand jury testimony. This has led to a summons from Judge Susan Brown to assistant DAs Carl Hobbs and Steve Morris — two of Lykos’s underlings who had attempted to bully their way into the grand jury hearing — along with court reporters Javier Leal and Katherine Chagaris.
“It is now come to this court’s attention that members of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office may be in possession of official transcripts of testimony from witnesses who appeared before the grand jury,” Judge Brown declared in the summons. If found guilty of contempt, the officials subject to the summons face the prospect of six months in jail.
The Harris County grand jury’s behavior has caused consternation in the DA’s office, and astonishment in the local media.
“All too often in the past, Harris County grand juries have functioned as rubber stamps providing prosecutors with indictments without impartial scrutiny of their substance,” notes the Chronicle. Of course, this is true of practically every grand jury in the country since 1946, when Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure was enacted. That measure, notes constitutional scholar Roger Roots, “made independently-acting grand juries illegal for all practical purposes.” Prior to that time, it was understood that a grand jury is not a government-controlled institution, but rather an independent assembly of citizens whose role is “to act as a check on the government — a people’s watchdog against arbitrary and malevolent prosecutions.”
Just as a trial jury has plenary authority to rule on both the facts and the law, a grand jury – as an independent body of responsible citizens — has unqualified authority to investigate government corruption. What happened in Harris County was not an example of a grand jury going rogue, but rather one behaving exactly as it should.
See the Houston Chronicle for more on this story.
