Editorial: Grand jury's procedural change needed

Changes to the local grand-jury selection process made earlier this year are welcome and needed.

We don't blame any officers of the court today for the system that seems to have been in place for more than 30 years. But applause all around for everyone involved in eliminating those potential conflicts of interest.

As summarized in Robin Fornoff's in-deph report in Sunday's paper, the 9th Judicial District Attorney's office long had a clerical role in excusing grand jurors who claimed hardships. "If a grand juror is excused, then the next alternate on the random list (provided by the court) is called and asked to come to the hearing," DA Matt Chandler explained.

Criminal defense Attorney Kirk Chavez argued, without presenting any compelling evidence, that the prosecutor's office had opportunity to "stack the deck" against criminal defendants.

District Judge Teddy Hartley in February ruled against Chavez' motion to quash an indictment against murder suspect Enrique Deleon, finding no evidence that the prosecutor "hand picked" grand jurors in the case.

But Hartley also met with Chandler and District Court Clerk Manager Shelly Burger a few days after Chavez' motion and all agreed it best to remove any opportunity for abuse of the system. Beginning last month, the court clerk's office is solely responsible for handling grand jurors' requests for removal and notifying replacements.

As they say in the court TV shows, a district attorney can convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. There is little need to "stack the deck" in selecting a panel, which only determines whether a court should hear the case. And again, there is no reason to suspect Chandler or any previous district attorney even tried to do as Chavez wondered in his court motion.

But whenever possible, it's best to remove all appearance of opportunity for impropriety.

Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Clovis Media Inc. editorial board, which includes Publisher Ray Sullivan and Editor David Stevens.