Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: grand jury found nonrepresentative of community

Nothing happens to the case now, because this issue is of no consequence.

Who "found" the grand jury to be nonrepresentative? If that is just the inmate's opinion, then it doesn't matter at all. If an official investigation deems the grand jury tainted then you might have something to go on, but even then you would probably be out of luck.

There is no right to a particular racial, gender, ethnic or age mix on a grand jury (or on a trial jury, for that matter). The *system* of selecting jurors has to be unbiased, but it would be unrealistic to expect all (or even most) randomly selected juries to match the characteristics of the community.

Grand juries are small groups of people. It is all but impossible to make sure that such a small group contains proportionate representations of whites, blacks, asians, hispanics, Pacific islanders, Native Americans, and so on. It is also impossible to ensure proportionate representation of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims (and, of course, there are Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, etc.), Eastern Orthodox, Buddhists, Shintos, Confucians, Hindus and other religions.

What else does your friend expect to be counted? Does he expect proportional numbers of gays and straights? Young, middle-aged and elderly? White collar, blue collar, homemakers, retirees, students and unemployed? High school drop-outs, high school grads, college drop-outs, college grads, and those with advanced degrees? Fat, average and thin? Republican, Democrat and independent?

If you have a group of, say, twelve jurors and want to make sure that all (or even a few) of the groups mentioned above are represented proportionately, you will have an impossible task -- and will also have to dismiss jurors because of their race, gender etc. when there are too many of a given group. Such a dismissal is illegal, so the failure to dismiss jurors illegally is not a problem at all.

Finally, even if there had been a problem with the way the grand jury was constituted, your friend would still have to show that he received unfair treatment as a result *and* that the jury was deliberately constituted in order to cause such unfair treatment.

But even then, if the *trial* jury found him guilty after a fair trial, it doesn't matter one bit what the grand jury looked like.

From what I can see, your friend's dissatisfaction with the grand jury is not an issue at all, let alone one worthy of a retrial.

Re: grand jury found nonrepresentative of community

if you can email directly how you and/or your friend came to these particular findings, and more detailed information on the case itself, i may be able to further assist you legally in this matter. also, let me know if your friend is now seeking some form of private legal representation or not, or how he is trying to proceed in this matter.