Citizen-Called Grand Juries?

Reading that the New Mexico Supreme Court paused citizens’ grand juries to investigate the Governor’s mostly fine handling of the pandemic sparked a memory from 1977.

The news story correctly noted that we’re one of the few states where citizens can petition for a grand jury and have one called. It added, “[NM Sen. David] Gallegos, who is also a Eunice school board member, said he believes this is the first time the constitutional provision for citizen-led grand juries has been used.” Actually, it’s often been used.

It is an unusual provision. I learned of it in 1977, after I’d quit my job as El Paso Times bureau chief in Las Cruces. A gentleman who alleged that police officers had beaten him got 75 people to sign his petition for a grand jury, to which he would bring his claim. Third Judicial District Court duly convened a grand jury. (Today it would require “the greater of two hundred registered voters or two percent of the registered voters.”)

I’d been the investigative reporter here, and, after three years, people knew me. (Initially, city officials were shocked to see a long-haired guy stroll into city commission meetings and plunk his motorcycle helmet down on the reporters’ table. Mayor Tommy Graham dubbed me, “Captain Zoom.”)

So when the list of grand jurors included “Peter Goodman,” folks were frankly disbelieving. A rare citizen-called grand jury, and a local muckraker is on it? (So far as I know, it was pure chance. Not some court functionary being mischievous.)

The thing about a grand jury is, once formed, it may investigate any public malfeasance in the county, and must inspect the jail, which we did. (My main memory of that jail, possibly from another visit, was a city police detective taunting a prisoner. The prisoner may have deserved it; but a few years earlier that same detective had brought a movie camera to antiwar demonstrations, to record and identify us.)

As I recall, we didn’t indict anyone for the alleged beating that had caused the jury. (I have to be vague here, because grand jury matters are secret, even decades later.) District Attorney Ernie Williams brought us a few criminal cases. We also investigated some things I’d been told by employees about a public entity, much to that entity’s chagrin, but ultimately we did not make any findings or indictments regarding those claims.

One thing I noticed, and have confirmed since during decades of intermittent contact with juries, was that although we came from all walks of life, everyone took the work seriously and did the best possible job.

So, yeah, it’s an obscure constitutional provision most states don’t have; but it’s definitely been used; and I’m kind of fond of it, mostly because, as folks in the Progressive Era passionately believed, a citizen’s grand jury with such power can check abuses of power.

However, the current effort to beat up the Governor with a grand jury smells rotten. Agree or disagree with her, there’s no hint of criminal activity; and where’s the malfeasance? (I’m also not sure whom a county’s grand jury has jurisdiction over.) Besides, if Lujan Grisham has to testify at a dozen grand juries, she won’t have time to do her job. Could the juries then investigate the neglect of duty they caused?

I hope this partisan abuse of the grand jury process won't spark a constitutional amendment rescinding that right.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 5 December 2021, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]