A Greater Houston Coalition for Justice

1. A Greater Houston Coalition for Justice Presents A Community Outcry For Justice

2. Houston a Beautiful Majestic City But, behind this beauty, there is a dark side. An unbridled use of excessive or deadly force by law enforcement

3. Harris County Grand Jury • Criminal Justice for the community of color has been elusive in Houston-Harris County. A perception exist that Harris County is a discriminatory institutionalized criminal justice system, beginning with the Harris County Grand Jury, police department’s internal affairs and other criminal justice institutions. • Much has been written about Harris County’s Grand Jury’s system miscarriage of justice, especially when it involves Police use of force and deadly force against people of color . • The formation of the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice was for the purpose of initiating a cohesive community strategy to address critical issues that could result in serious consequences to our communities.

4. A Questionable Grand Jury System in HARRIS County • Is the Harris County Grand Jury commissioner selection system susceptible to abuse? • In Texas, state law allows two choices for seating grand juries: random selection as in jury trials and a system using commissioners. • In Harris County, 12 of 21 criminal district courts use the commissioner approach to empanel a grand jury, while another seven courts employ the random system. One of the remaining courts uses a combination of random jurors and people who volunteer on their own to serve on grand juries. One court relies exclusively on those who volunteer or already have served on grand juries. • The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of the commissioner method in Texas, justices warned in a 1977 opinion that it is susceptible to abuse.

5. Investigation raises questions about whether grand jury system in Harris County favors police Source: By James Pinkerton Grand jurors empathizing with police officers is at the heart of questions raised about the shooting simulator.

6. Has the use of shooting simulators training by grand jurors Tainted indictments of police officers in Harris County? • The District Attorney’s use of a “Simulator Training Program” for Grand Jury members is an impermissible influence on the Grand Jury system. How can Grand Jurors be expected to look at a case impartially when they start their term by watching a one-sided “simulator”? • Grand Jurors either be shown an opposing view of the simulator program or else shown nothing at all - just like real jurors.

7. Has the use of shooting simulators training by grand jurors Tainted indictments of police officers in Harris County? • The “Simulator” is inherently flawed because it is simply not based on reality. Is the DA’s Office saying that the scenarios depicted in the “Simulator” are based on actual events? OF COURSE NOT. • It is more appropriate, and more in line with the adversarial system of American Jurisprudence, to offer alternative points of view. In light of recent cases highlighting prosecutorial misconduct and the conviction of innocent people, Grand Jurors would be better served - and so would justice- if they were also required to view recent documentaries on this subject. • Documentaries such as “The Thin Blue Line” or the Recent CNN program on the Michael Morton Case. There are numerous examples. One could go as far back as The Scottsboro Boys”, an incident from the early 1930’s.

8. Has the use of shooting simulators training by grand jurors Tainted indictments of police officers in Harris County? • Grand Jurors should also be exposed to the advances of DNA evidence and how that has revealed terrible miscarriages of justice (e.g. The Innocence Project). • In conclusion, justice is not justice when only one side is presented; nor when opposing view points are deliberately omitted; and certainly not when grand jurors start out with biases. • Was the “Simulator” shown in the Brian Claunch’s proceeding? Houston police officer cleared Grand Jury who shot and killed a one- armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair.

9. Reported cases of police brutality

10. Greater Houston Coalition for Justice A Call for Justice JAMES PINKERTON Houston ChroniclePublished 06:30 a.m., Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Houston and Texas Local civil rights activists Tuesday called for the U.S. Department of Justice to review the elevated number of officer-involved shootings in the Houston area. Local civil rights activists Tuesday called for the U.S. Department of Justice to review the elevated number of officer-involved shootings in the Houston area last year, and asked the City Council for public access to internal police reviews of the use of deadly

11. Reaction Over Another DOJ Request by: Pat Hernandez, February 17, 2011 . There is another call for a Justice Department investigation of the Houston Police Department. The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice claims there is an apparent culture of lawlessness in the HPD that needs to end. Pat Hernandez has more. The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice, a group that includes many civil rights organizations, announced it has filed a request with the DOJ to launch a full investigation. The group says there have been “patterns and practices” of civil rights violations by the Houston Police Department against minorities.

12. No Billed Cases By Harris County Grand Juries Source: (Source: By JAMES PINKERTON Houston Chronicle- www.news-journal.com/news/state/shooting-simulator-spurs • HPD's own records paint a controversial portrait. During the last decade, 2,135 complaints about alleged police brutality. Only 33 were sustained -- less than two percent. And if you count only citizen complaints, the number of times the brutality allegation has been confirmed is just 16 -- 16 of more than 2,100. • Harris County grand juries have cleared HPD officers in shootings 288 consecutive times. The last time a Harris County grand jury charged an HPD officer in a shooting was in 2004. Since then, only three other officers from other departments have been charged in shootings in Harris County

13. Harris County Grand Juries Selection Process • Advocate for state Legislative change in Harris County’s Grand Jury System, including how grand juries are selected. • Grand Juries in Harris County have close ties to the legal system. They included judges, attorneys, court employees, bail bond agents, probation officers and law enforcement officers. • This is a selection process that is antiquated and needs to be abolished. It’s stacked, because the selection is done for a judge by a commissioner, • The commissioner (he or she) select peers, people of their way of thinking. It’s an unfair practice, it’s subjective, encourages bias in the selection process.

14. The Greater Houston Coalition for JusticeGrand Jury Reform Campaign

15. a Petition By Citizens of Harris County, TexasTo Improve the Selection of Grand Jury Members by Randomized Methods Petition By Citizens of Harris County, Texas To Improve the Selection of Grand Jury Members by Randomized Methods Please review and sign this petition. It is meant to improve the Harris County Grand Jury System by ensuring qualified grand jurors are selected at random, as opposed to potentially biased, and discriminatory manners that exclude Blacks and Hispanics, as well as Women and Others. Partida, 430 U.S. at 494, 1977, in Karson, 2006, p. 10).

16. a Petition By Citizens of Harris County, TexasTo Improve the Selection of Grand Jury Members by Randomized Methods • Background: Over half of the commissioners nominating individuals to serve as grand jurors were associated with the criminal justice system, and less than 10% of the serving grand jurors were Hispanic-surnamed though approximately 33% of the county population was Hispanic (Karson, 2006, p. 3). Black and Women grand jurors face similar, unfavorable odds. “The exclusion of otherwise eligible persons from jury service solely because of their ancestry or national origin is discrimination prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment” (U.S. Supreme Court, in Hernandez v. Texas). In Powers v. Ohio the Supreme Court held that jurors have a right not to be excluded based on their race, yet race-based exclusion continues to stigmatize growing numbers of Americans.

17. a Petition By Citizens of Harris County, TexasTo Improve the Selection of Grand Jury Members by Randomized Methods • History: • “Racist Klansmen prevented the indictment of suspected murderers during the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi in the 1960s and that colonial rebels influenced the indictment of British soldiers for murder during the Revolutionary War. Thus, it is suggested that control of the grand jury is effectively the control of justice” (Karson, 2006, p. 4). • The concept of being propertied in the system gives one the power to create laws, to decide who will be defined as the law breaker, to use the law to support one’s own interests, or to be able to have the law serve the interests of the “ruling class” (Adler, Mueller & Laufer, 2004). Social power is retained through the political power process (Mann, 1986). While there are differing criminological perspectives on the origins of criminal law, most recognize that the propertied influence the definition of the law. The law, for all intents and purposes, is their property. As such, some states continued to limit those eligible for jury duty to those who were landholders—those who were propertied in the traditional sense of the word (Younger, 1963, in Karson, 2006, p. 4).

18. a Petition By Citizens of Harris County, TexasTo Improve the Selection of Grand Jury Members by Randomized Methods • Chronicle author, Gutheinz (2008) served in the Harris Count Grand Jury system, and termed it “laughable, ” ‘The grand jurors that are chosen in Harris County are too white and too conservative. Most grand juries here don't even come close to reflecting the ethnic, racial and political makeup of Texas' most populous county. I know mine didn't’” (June 1, 2008; too white, too right; minorities; democrats pay unfair price). • Call for Action: • The County district courts have continued to use the key-man system and have systematically discriminated against the Hispanic population by limiting their participation in the grand jury process. This failure jeopardizes the assurance of an impartial jury (Holland v. Illinois, 1990) by not allowing a fair cross-section of the populace to be considered for service and it can be considered intentional discrimination as the jury pool selection practice “is susceptible of abuse or is not racially neutral” (Castaneda v. Partida, 430 U.S. at 494, 1977, in Karson, 2006, p. 10).

19. We Can Do BetterIn America! The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice (GHCFJ) has dedicated this presentation to the victims and families of those who died or were seriously injured due to the use of deadly or excessive force of police officers, during traffic stops, investigations, or while in the custody of law enforcement officers of the Houston Police Department, Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and other agencies in the greater Houston metropolitan area and its surrounding counties.