SO WHAT IS A CONSCIENTIOUS GRAND JUROR SUPPOSED TO DO?

Two things were on my mind when I started my recently completed five-week
grand jury stint. First was the not-so-old adage that a prosecutor can get
a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich" if he wanted it to. The other was
the dismaying number of young black men who are winding up in our prisons.

Now, I have a third thing to worry over: Donovan Jackson, the 16-year-old
videotaped being slammed and punched by an Inglewood, Calif., police officer.

The ham-sandwich adage, no doubt overstated, is based on the fact that
grand juries hear only the prosecution's side of things; the defendant may
not even be aware that the proceedings are taking place, and the prosecutor
is likely to be the only lawyer in the room.

The second is no overstatement at all. Too many young black men,
particularly those without connections or financial resources, are being
sent to jail, often with long mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses.

I had made up my mind that I wouldn't lightly or unwittingly add to that
dismaying trend. Any prosecutor who presented a case to me would have to
have his stuff together. I would make sure that the police dotted their I's
and crossed their T's. Cases based on profiling, on presumptions about how
poor black folk behave, on sloppy police work or on the expectation that we
automatically should believe the cops would produce no indictment if I had
anything to do with it.

That was my intention.

Here is my humble confession: I wasn't able to do much of anything about
the stuff I had in mind. Evidence is evidence. How can I vote not to indict
the guy who sells $100 worth of crack to an undercover officer and is
arrested with the marked and recorded money in his possession? How can I
ask my fellow jurors not to do their part in bringing murderers and rapists
to justice?

It is unlikely that everyone whose case came before our 23-member panel was
guilty of everything on the prosecution's catchall list. Surely, some of
them will have alternative explanations of the relevant facts and
circumstances we considered. But in the overwhelming majority of the cases
we heard, there was enough evidence against the accused to warrant their
being brought to trial - which, after all, was what we were supposed to
decide. And even that decision, which requires only a majority vote, is
based on mere "probable cause," a much lower standard than the trial jury's
"beyond reasonable doubt."

Which brings me to Donovan Jackson. Imagine that the only information I had
about what happened in Inglewood two weeks ago came through the prosecutor
and police witnesses. Imagine that a cop shows me his scratched face and
says this crazy kid did it to him, then tells me he and his fellow officers
finally had to wrestle the boy to the ground in order to subdue him.

Would I be clever enough to read the false testimony for what it was? Don't
count on it. The likelihood is that I would end up voting to bring Donovan
Jackson to trial (where the cards also would be stacked against him).

What I am saying is that decent, even sympathetic, jurors might have wound
up sending an innocent young man to prison. Indeed, the only reason Donovan
Jackson and Inglewood police officer Jeremy Morse are topics of
conversation is that - shades of Rodney King - a civilian happened to take
video footage of the officer's actions.

Surely, Donovan Jackson and Rodney King aren't the only victims of police
brutality. The reason we know their cases is that we saw the action on
videotape. On the other hand, it doesn't follow that all untaped police
beatings are unjustified. Criminals do stupid things - to cops, to innocent
civilians and to each other.

So what is a conscientious grand juror supposed to do? Assume that cops
usually lie? Assume that most of those accused of crimes are innocent?
Demand a level of proof beyond what the law requires? Wait for the videotape?

Most, in fact, will go on believing most of what the authorities tell them
- - at least believing it enough to send the cases forward for trial.

Even if the cases include a ham sandwich or two.

William Raspberry writes for The Washington Post.