A member of the Darren Wilson grand jury is suing St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, claiming that McCulloch publicly mis-characterized the grand jury’s deliberations, and asking for an injunction against the prohibition on grand jurors discussing cases. Some people think it’s a frivolous lawsuit. As a former member of a St. Louis County grand jury, I support it.

At the beginning of their term, grand jurors receive an explicit warning that they are prohibited, by law, from discussing the cases that they will be hearing. My understanding is that this violation of grand jury secrecy is a misdemeanor. But I wonder how that prohibition applies when the prosecuting attorney himself releases a full transcript of all of the testimony—as McCulloch did in the grand jury investigation of Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown. Purportedly, McCulloch broke the grand jury’s pact of silence in the interest of transparency. But in doing so, didn’t he imply that public discussion of testimony in this case is fair game? How can he prevent grand jurors from discussing the proceedings, when he has published the testimony himself?

It’s ironic. McCulloch’s transparency strategy—probably more of a public-relations move than a sincere attempt to open up the process—has backfired. If McCulloch had adhered to his own rules, he probably wouldn’t be facing this lawsuit and the further scrutiny of an already skeptical public.

Veering away from his own standard procedures has hurt McCulloch’s cause in another way, too. He should have handled the Darren Wilson case in the normal way—by presenting the outline of the case to a judge in a preliminary hearing, so that the judge could determine whether there was “probable cause” and whether the case merited going to trial.

Instead, he deviated from his own norm and took the case to the grand jury. It’s not the kind of case that normally qualifies for a grand jury hearing. More typically, the grand jury hears cases that merit a less-public venue for a preliminary hearing. Such cases include those in which the identity of witnesses or victims needs to be protected—cases, for example, involving undercover cops, victims of sexual abuse, or children. In a regular, open-court preliminary hearing by a judge, those witnesses’ and victims’ identities become public record—but if the judge determines that there’s no probable cause and rules against a full trial, the witnesses and victims have been exposed unnecessarily.

The Darren Wilson case did not fit these criteria. A straightforward preliminary hearing and possible full trial would have saved McCulloch a lot of problems, including this new lawsuit. But he decided against the normal route—possibly because he really did not want an indictment against a police officer, which he feared would happen if a court looked at the facts—or because he thought he could better control the presentation of facts in the grand jury setting.

And now, he’s in trouble—and possibly under investigation—himself. I’m rooting for the grand juror.

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The decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown is wrong in multiple ways, not the least of which is the unorthodox way that County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch presented his “case.”

There’s a lot to question: Police procedures immediately following the shooting; the hard-to-believe story told by Wilson; the fact that Wilson—the potential indictee– even testified to the grand jury; the undirected data-dump of evidence.

One thing I’m not hearing, though, is a more “meta” view of the grand jury proceedings. As I have written previously, I served on the St. Louis County Grand Jury a number of years ago, and it’s clear to me that McCulloch’s approach to the Wilson case was totally unorthodox—and perhaps even calculated to result in a non-indictment.

Floating above all of my doubts about the sincerity of McColloch’s attempt to get an indictment is the fact—in itself—that he treated this one case so differently—so unequally. In this one case—this case only—the possible indictment of a white police officer in the death of an unarmed black teenager—McColloch decided to go “separate and unequal” in his approach to the grand jury.

If he had wanted to demonstrate fairness, McCulloch could have treated this case just like any other. An “equal” treatment would have meant that the prosecutors would—as they do in all other cases before the grand jury—cull the evidence and show just enough to make the case for probable cause.

“Equal” treatment would have meant that the person facing possible indictment would not be given the opportunity to testify to the grand jury.

“Equal” treatment would have meant that the prosecutors would definitively list the charge they were seeking.

“Equal” treatment might also have meant that prosecutors would take their evidence directly to a judge for a preliminary hearing in open court—not to the secret grand jury. [My understanding of the role of the grand jury is to hold closed-door, probable cause hearings in cases in which the identity of minor children or undercover police officers need to be protected. This case did not meet those criteria.]

But “equal” is not what we got.

McCulloch’s separate and unequal grand-jury strategy is, to me, just another reflection of the inequalities in our society and in our criminal justice system. Our system treats black people differently, plain and simple. In this case, a black victim received a different standard of justice. [He jaywalked. He may have shoplifted. He was unarmed, but was shot dead.] A white perpetrator—a police officer, no less—got special treatment. Not just on the street, and not just in the police station and in the media, but in the grand jury room as well.

It’s just another part of the ingrained, unacknowledged, not-so-subtle institutionalized racism that permeates our society and our justice system.

Shame on Bob McCulloch for being a part of it.

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A few years ago, I was a member of the St. Louis County Grand Jury—the same body that is currently considering evidence in the Michael Brown shooting. According to news reports, the Grand Jury still operates the same way it did back then. Based on my experience in that grand jury room, I predict that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown, will not be indicted. Here’s why:

As St. Louis County grand jurors, our weekly routine began when we received the day’s docket of cases. It was a multi-page document, on which were printed the case numbers, defendants’ names, and—this is the part that’s most significant to my no-indictment prediction—the charge that we were to consider, plus its legal classification [e.g., D Felony].

Our weekly case dockets contained from about 30 to as many as 60 cases. Each case was introduced by a prosecutor, who brought in witnesses—usually police officers—to testify about the details of the crime. Most of the cases were “slam-dunks.” The evidence was overwhelming [thieves who left their wallets with IDs behind at the crime scene, muddy tire tracks leading directly from a home invasion to the burglar’s house, shoplifters caught on security cameras, etc.] On our first day as grand jurors, County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch [who is leading the Darren Wilson investigation] joked that “We don’t catch the smart ones.”

I cannot remember a single case, among the close to 1,000 that we looked at on our dockets, that did not list the charge for which the prosecuting attorney was seeking an indictment.

Looking back, I can see how the formatting of the dockets and the presentation of the cases conditioned us—both openly and in a subliminal way—to vote for indictments, which we did, in, I’d estimate, 95% of the cases. And I can imagine that a case without a charge listed on the docket would stand out.

So, let’s see: All of the other cases are linked directly to a specific charge. This case doesn’t include a charge. In fact, it’s even more confusing than that: The prosecuting attorney is asking the grand jurors to decide IF there should be any charge at all, and WHAT that charge might be [a job for which grand jurors—if they are like me—are completely unqualified].

Given this break in protocol and the confusion it must be creating, I think it’s logical to infer, as a grand juror, that on this case, the prosecuting attorney is not really seeking an indictment. And since grand juries, as has been demonstrated many times, overwhelmingly follow the prosecutor’s lead, I think we can see where this is going.

And that’s why, if I were a betting person—and if Las Vegas bookies were perverse enough to offer odds in the Darren Wilson case—my money would be on a no-indictment result.

[UPDATE: Local news, as you may have heard, is now reporting that the grand jury looking into the Darren Wilson case is now under investigation itself, because a member of the grand juror may have discussed the case outside of the jury room–as indicated by a “friend-of-a-friend” post on Twitter. That potential breach of protocol could tank the entire grand jury investigation and could should help deep-six any indictment, too.]

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You don’t volunteer for Grand Jury duty in St. Louis County for the money. Few can get off work for 18 consecutive Wednesdays and get by on the allotted $18-per-eight-hour-day. I live a fairly cushy life. So, a few years ago, when the judge asked for volunteers from a cohort of 200 potential jurors, I raised my hand, not really knowing what lay ahead, but curious about the inner workings of the justice system.

I had no idea what a grand jury did. Turns out, at the county level, the grand jury isn’t the kind that investigates organized crime or reviews cases with headline mojo. Our job was to be a relief valve for the overstuffed docket of preliminary hearings—and a rehearsal hall for prosecutors preparing cases for the bigger time of a live courtroom.

So, sworn in, given an official badge, and briefly briefed on state statutes, penalties, procedures and the locations of nearby restaurants, we began. They warned us: It’s not like “Law & Order” or “CSI.” We’d never again be able read about or watch a crime report the same way. There will be laughs, tears and gasps of astonishment, they said.

It wasn’t. We couldn’t. And there were. Our weekly crime chronicles introduced us to the hungry and homeless, who stole steaks and shoelaces from supermarkets. The brazen, caught on videotape unabashedly sauntering out of big-box stores with cartloads of tv’s and microwave ovens. The sloppy, ripping off car stereos as their wallets spilled out of their pockets and stayed behind on the front seat, IDs intact. The morally bankrupt, forging their best friends’ names on checks, or stealing jewelry from the elderly who paid them for home care.  And the despicable, who raped and tortured their ex-girlfriends or sexually molested their biological children.

Our charge was to serve up indictments—or not. Mostly, we did. Every week, the endless loop of crime re-booted, and while I admit to finding the soap-opera perversely entertaining, I took my job seriously. We all did. The prosecutors impressed me with their thoroughness most of the time, and their cynicism some of the time. With as many as 63 cases on a single-day’s docket, the pace was often super-fast-forward.

The witnesses—usually the cops who made the traffic stops or vaulted fences to catch the bad guys—varied in their ability to talk about what they did. We strained to hear the mumblers and LOL’d with guys who told their stories so colorfully that they could make a living in stand-up comedy. Clearly the police were working hard. Some were working out hard, judging by the biceps and pecs threatening to burst out of their uniforms.

I wondered, sometimes aloud, if we always heard the truth about Miranda, the pretexts for the traffic stops, and the search warrants. But in a scary situation, I now know more than ever that I want one of those folks on my side, and I’ll pay the taxes to make sure I get one.

When victims testified, you could almost touch their pain. We saw a sad parade of women—some tearful, some angry, some simply resigned to their fates—abandoned by boyfriends and husbands who never paid a nickel to support their own kids, even though the court order called for as little as $25 a month. The women we cried with will probably never get a cent, and neither will the long line of folks defrauded by home repair companies and other fly-by-nights. But I could see that each got some small sense of validation from the chance to tell their stories to someone official—even if it was just us, a bunch of random citizens trying to make sense of the senseless.

Our discussions were, by law, secret and closed-door. It took a week or so to get the hang of this gig. At first, we solemnly talked about cases in detail before voting. And in the beginning, I was determined not to be the proverbial ham-sandwich indicter. But some cases were such slam-dunks for indictment that we were already voting before the door to the Grand Jury room had completely closed behind the prosecutor and witness.

They told us to ask questions. So we did. Most of our questions were reasonable. We had been warned not to emulate previous grand jurors who asked abuse victims about their sexual histories.  One juror, though, clearly obsessed with guns and 2^nd Amendment rights, often fixated on the guns holstered in the cops’ utility belts and invariably asked about caliber, casings and other weaponry issues only tangentially relevant to our deliberations.

In the brief moments between cases, during breaks, and at lunch, our dozen got to know each other.  Our grand jury included the retired maitre d’ of a posh restaurant, the owner of a heating-and-cooling business, a postal worker, a former Green Beret, a high-school teacher. One of the original 12 un-volunteered early in our stint, too emotionally clobbered by child- and sexual-abuse cases to go on.

We shared homemade cakes and cookies, and we traded family stories and workplace horrors. We exchanged email addresses and promised to stay in touch. We agreed. We argued. Once, a jury member scared us so badly that we took our fears to the judge. After only 18 weeks, we had become a dysfunctional family.

I learned a great deal about the law, but much more about myself. I discovered that a liberal like me can be just as hard on crime as anyone else, particularly when “crime” is not a just a political code word, but a real occurrence. I found myself scouring the weekly docket for crimes in my comfortable neighborhood, simultaneously hoping to be reassured that I was safe from the horrors we heard about in other municipalities, and inexplicably, somehow wanting to feel that my life was relevant, too.

I went home each week wiped out and overwhelmed by the volume and repetitiveness of criminal activity, exhilarated by a new understanding of legal procedures, and bursting with stories I couldn’t tell.

It was an eye-opening, mind-altering, life-changing, feel-good-and-feel-bad, exhausting and sometimes goose-bump-scary experience. I’d do it again in a Midwestern milli-second. But I won’t be invited. One of the many things I learned about our legal system as a grand[ma] jurist was that I’m now exempt for the next 10 years.

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