904 York Co. grand jury indictments in 1 day: Judge taking time to decide if it’s legal

A York County court judge decided he needs more time to make a decision when a hearing got confrontational Friday as the focus was on whether it was legal to issue 904 indictments in one day in June.

Circuit Court Judge Dan Hall said in a hearing packed with York County prosecutors and lawyers he will decide within the next two weeks on whether to toss the indictments or let the cases stand.

The hearing at the Moss Justice Center in York was brought by 27 defense lawyers who said the grand jury in June could not have properly reviewed all 904 cases in a single 10-hour session. An indictment must be issued for prosecutors to take a case to trial.

The defense lawyers said 418 people were indicted by the grand jury on 904 charges, which averages 39 seconds per indictment. The defense lawyers want all of the those indictments tossed and for York County to bring in a new grand jury to review each case.

”Constitutional due process is all that protects the people from the government. We must always oppose the systematic sacrifice of due process in the name of efficiency,” said lead defense lawyer Leland Greeley after court in a statement to The Herald.

Sixteenth Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett says that claim is “ridiculous” because many cases had multiple defendants with multiple charges. He said that means dozens of cases could be handled in a minute or less.

The defense lawyers’ claim, Brackett said, “takes that assumption like a drunk uses a lamp post, for support not for illumination.”

Greeley argued every one of those people are entitled under the law to a fair and just treatment by the grand jury after police present facts and evidence.

By comparison, May’s grand jury had 387 cases, April had 289 cases, March had 347, and February had 438, records show. However, there are no documents or transcripts from the grand jury proceedings those months to show how much time was spent on each case.

This dispute has shed a light on the secret grand jury process that is an integral part of every criminal case that goes to trial.

Who is the grand jury?

A grand jury is a panel of up to 18 people who hear basic facts about a criminal case, said David Hamilton, York County Clerk of Court. The clerk of court office administers the grand jury, but prosecutors bring the cases to the grand jury after police make an arrest.

The grand jury meets once a month at the Moss Justice Center in York. The jury can either issue a “true bill’ indictment that allows prosecutors to go forward with a trial, or a “no bill” that states grand jurors found not enough probable cause for the case to move forward.

Grand jury proceedings are not open to the public, Hamilton said. Law enforcement officers speak to a grand jury about charges against a defendant. Defendants and their lawyers are not allowed to appear before a grand jury.

Grand jurors generally serve for one calendar year.

Preliminary hearings

Hall also voiced concerns about the preliminary hearings, which Greeley argued are supposed to held before the grand jury hears a case in order to be valid.

In a preliminary hearing, a defendant and his lawyer have a chance to ask police questions and argue facts in front of a lower level judge called a magistrate. That magistrate then decides whether there is probable cause for prosecutors to go forward.

Brackett told Hall the reason 904 cases were brought is that his office is “required to indict cases in a timely fashion.”

“The pending cases had not been indicted,” Brackett said.

Hall said a preliminary hearing is supposed to come before a grand jury indictment. He’s concerned about the “liberty at stake” for defendants in jail who had not had a preliminary hearing.

Brackett is the elected prosecutor for York County who heads an office of more than two dozen assistants who handle criminal cases. Brackett told Hall that in May, there was a dispute over a decades-old agreement between prosecutors, defense lawyers and the courts to centralize preliminary hearings and use a single officer from each police agency. Possible changes had been discussed among court officials, Friday testimony showed.

Hall asked Brackett if the reason to send 904 cases to the grand jury had anything to do with the discussion of the preliminary hearings discussions with magistrates. Brackett said, no. He said it was done once his office made the decision to stop organizing and sponsoring the entire preliminary hearing effort in York County.

Hall then said: “You understand you did not have authority to make that decision?”

Andrew Dys: 803-329-4065, @AndrewDysHerald

This story was originally published August 10, 2018 at 5:08 PM.