Jackson5
0
"Quien se anime a traducirlo, que lo haga, porque esto es interesante."
Long before the allegations against Michael Jackson, District Attorney Tom Sneddon helped change California law in a way that now plays a crucial role in the case against the King of Pop.
The change he worked to bring about then has strengthened his hand today and limited the ways Mr. Jackson's attorneys can challenge the charges.
In 1990, when Mr. Sneddon was president of the California District Attorneys Association, the organization launched an aggressive campaign to get Proposition 115 passed. Known as the Victims' Rights Initiative, it was one of a series of measures that grew out of the victims' rights movement. Among other things, it allowed police to testify in a preliminary hearing about the case, rather than requiring the victim to take the stand.
It also took away the defendant's right to a preliminary hearing after a grand jury issues an indictment. In a preliminary hearing, both the prosecution and the defense lay out the case in open court to let the judge decide if there is sufficient evidence for the defendant to go to trial. This contrasts significantly with the grand jury proceeding, which is conducted by the prosecution in secret without a judge.
A grand jury indicted Mr. Jackson on child molestation charges Wednesday, according to county sources. The indictment is sealed and the exact charges aren't known, but will likely be revealed when the entertainer is arraigned April 30.
A gag order prohibits attorneys from commenting about the Jackson case.
If Mr. Jackson had been indicted before 1991, when the law changed, he would have been entitled to a public preliminary hearing before a judge whose ruling could trump the grand jury's decision on whether to go to trial.
But now, Mr. Jackson's attorneys are more limited in their potential legal challenges. The defense will likely question the ultra-secrecy that surrounded the grand jury hearing, claiming it may have intimidated grand jurors and witnesses and affected the outcome. Defense lawyers may also question whether evidence presented was legally obtained and admissible, and whether prosecutors fulfilled their legal requirement to present any evidence that could exonerate their client.
If Mr. Sneddon had prosecuted Mr. Jackson before the law changed, experts say he likely would have done so without using the grand jury. In a ruling cheered by defense lawyers, the state Supreme Court in 1978 gave defendants the right to a preliminary hearing after indictment, potentially rendering a decision by a grand jury moot.
"We had an aberration for those years where we still had the ability to go to a grand jury, but there wasn't much point in doing so," said Solano County District Attorney Dave Paulson, who is vice president of the California District Attorneys Association. "The use of grand juries pretty much dropped off the radar."
The effect of the 1978 ruling, known as the Hawkins decision, on the use of grand juries was dramatic. The year before, California grand juries issued nearly 700 indictments. That fell to 439 in 1979 and bottomed out in 1987 at six, according to the American Grand Jury Foundation.
"The rationale of the Hawkins decision was the denial of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws because we treated defendants who were prosecuted by complaint and defendants indicted by the grand jury so differently," said Gerald Uelman, who was on the defense team in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
"Of course, it rankled the prosecution that they no longer had the option of the grand jury as a viable tool. So in 1990, prosecutors put together their little package of goodies they wanted and promoted a statewide initiative in 1991 that included a clause in there to amend the constitution to overrule Hawkins."
Defense lawyers view grand juries as a way for the prosecution to conduct a secret dry run before a trial, but prosecutors see it as a way to speed the case along and save money. "What happened as a result of the Hawkins decision was there was a tremendous increase in time spent in court (for preliminary hearings)," Mr. Paulson said, causing a drain on funds. He said there was a "sigh of relief" when Proposition 115 passed.
A sigh for prosecutors, but not defense lawyers who are barred from the grand jury proceedings.
The passage of the proposition in 1991 swung the pendulum in the opposite direction. In the years following, the use of grand juries climbed again to nearly 1,000 and then leveled off to about 700 per year.
Mr. Paulson pointed out a grand jury hearing is not just the prosecutor's case: "I'm obligated to put on any scintilla of evidence that may point to the defendant's lack of guilt."
But history shows grand juries almost always grant the prosecution's indictment request.
Assistant District Attorney Pat McKinley, who has been with the Santa Barbara office for 33 years, said: "I can't remember the last time we asked for an indictment and one wasn't issued. . . . You normally don't do it unless you think you have the horses to carry the day."
Fuente: News Press
