What kinds of powers can prosecutors exercise? Kami Chavis So it’s really important that we understand how and when and whether such force is justified. They are vested with the authority to use legal force. Transparency is important there because we’re thinking about how police officers police communities.

It’s not set up to be that way.Īnd that can cause some tension when we’re thinking about these cases where the police is the accused. So the grand jury is not a transparent institution. And the secrecy was there to protect witnesses, because if a witness is going to say something, and then you later needed that witness for trial, you wanted to make sure that they were protected. For example, if the allegations were not sustained, you didn’t want them to be embarrassed in some way.

When you go back to the founding of our government, historically, the idea was that you wanted to have that secrecy there to protect the accused, for several different reasons. There’s a lot of secrecy around the grand jury. When you think about grand juries in general, the grand jury is not a transparent institution. Can you start off by talking about how grand juries are designed - should proceedings be transparent? Kami Chavis Fabiola Cineasįrom the day that Daniel Cameron released the grand jury decision on October 2, people began to claim that there was a lack of transparency in the proceedings. Our conversation has been edited for clarity. I talked to Chavis about what this level of power means in Taylor’s case and for similar cases involving police use of force.

While there’s good reason for grand jury proceedings to be secret, Chavis says, cases like Taylor’s, in which public distrust is high, demand transparency. And grand jury proceedings, a body of peers tasked with determining whether to bring charges against an alleged perpetrator, are often done under secretive pretenses. According to Kami Chavis, a professor of law at Wake Forest University and director of the school’s criminal justice program, prosecutors have broad discretion, discretion that’s rarely ever challenged. All of this has left advocates casting doubt on Cameron’s process - and questioning the vast amount of latitude he’s been afforded.Īnd the doubt isn’t without reason - prosecutors are rarely ever checked or disciplined for their decisions. And after a judge ordered Cameron to release the grand jury recordings earlier this month, some argued that he heavily relied on witnesses that supported the officers’ version of events.įor example, Cameron’s team presented testimony from a witness who said he heard the officers knock on Taylor’s door that night, but did not present testimony from the dozen other witnesses who said police had not knocked, according to attorneys for Taylor’s family. That single charge was the only one jurors were allowed to consider - whether former officer Brett Hankison endangered neighbors when he shot through Taylor’s apartment, not whether any of the officers committed murder or even manslaughter in regards to Taylor.Ĭameron also didn’t immediately admit that this was the only charge he presented to jurors. While Cameron is worried “this disclosure would irreversibly alter Kentucky’s legal system,” activists and attorneys for Taylor’s family have long been worried that Cameron, and prosecutors in general, have too much power.Īfter spending six months investigating the shooting in which Taylor was killed in her own home, he only recommended charges of wanton endangerment to just one of the three officers who fired a total of 32 shots into her apartment on March 13. In response, Cameron filed a motion to prevent the juror from speaking publicly while he appeals the case. On October 8, an attorney for the anonymous juror argued before a judge that all recordings, transcripts, and files be released, and that the juror be allowed to “talk about their service” on the grand jury. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the special prosecutor who led the Breonna Taylor investigation, has been hard-pressed to keep a juror from speaking publicly about the grand jury proceedings.

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