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San Diego Hopes 9/11 Grand Jury Indictments Might Some Day Be Made
The only result from a grand jury experiment that took place in San Diego on April 14, 2007, is this serious and sincere warning:
The grand jury system is vulnerable, and can be abused. Its future application to 9/11 crimes needs to be wisely managed and very carefully watched by conscientious people or 9/11 justice may never be achieved.
Although a number of procedural problems prevented the people who volunteered to act as jurors at the April 14 event from ever working together to come to conclusions and issue indictments, they say a grand jury may some day be able to do so.
More than half the original volunteers dissociated themselves from the event on or shortly after April 14. Even so, at least eleven out of eleven of them have expressed in writing their very strong desire to publicly correct false reports that a citizens’ grand jury in San Diego indicted or charged people with 9/11 crimes.
They state: “Contrary to reports in April and May of 2007, and possibly thereafter, an April 14, 2007, citizens’ grand jury in San Diego never made any indictments of any individuals regarding the September 11 attacks. Unfortunately, an incorrect report posted to the internet and now circulating around it, titled ‘Historic Result From San Diego Citizens' Grand Jury On The Crimes Of September 11, 2001 In New York City,’ spawned hundreds of replications of that false announcement, and threatens to interfere with future efforts for 9/11 truth and justice by means of the grand jury system.”
Several of the volunteers who had been misrepresented by that false announcement (that is, the few who remained in touch with each other regarding the project) resisted their very strong desire to publicly correct the error on line right away. Instead, working as rapidly as possible in their spare time, they communicated with each other about how best to correct the record without harming the 9/11 truth movement, or any individuals involved in it.
Their decision was to communicate to the author of the false announcement, first by email and telephone, so he could correct the error. The author refused to make the correction. So a letter was composed and nine out of ten of the volunteers voted in favor of sending it to the author and CCing it to a carefully selected list. The letter (http://911grandjuryinfo.homestead.com/SDCGJ_Correction_of_DonPaul.html) demanded that the author of the false report correct the error no later than midnight, May 26. That demand was ignored. The volunteers then voted to publicly correct the false announcement by accurately reporting what happened on and after April 14 by publishing to the internet this blog and the letter referenced above.
The volunteers’ only conclusion is this: the public needs to be warned immediately that judicial procedures for 9/11 justice must be very carefully managed and monitored.
They base this conclusion on a number of avoidable errors they observed on or after the April 14 hearing. Some of the avoidable errors include:
- Allowing the prosecutor to cancel the jury’s opportunity to deliberate.
- Preventing the jury from working together, or even meeting, in private after the prosecutor’s presentation.
- Not providing the jury with a way to communicate, meet, and deliberate in the days following the prosecutor’s presentation.
- Allowing the prosecutor to meet with the jurors after his presentation.
- Allowing the prosecutor to take a show-of-hands vote for conclusions he had drawn.
- Allowing the prosecutor to take a show-of-hands vote for conclusions he had not demonstrated were supportable.
- Overlooking standard procedures, such as
- promising but failing to conform to established federal grand jury procedure (including the requirement that grand juries be held in private),
- needing to be reminded to swear the jury in,
- not instructing the jury as to their duties and obligations,
- not reviewing all the participants’ roles and obligations,
- not making an opening statement,
- not organizing a presentation so as to demonstrate proofs and draw sound conclusions from clearly presented evidence,
- not making a closing argument,
- not allowing the jury to create a presentment,
- not allowing the jury to issue an indictment.
- Not supporting the jury in their efforts to write the presentment.
- Not ensuring proper execution of the jury deliberation process.
- Publicly announcing that the jury had come to conclusions, even though they had not.
- Publicly announcing that the jury had made indictments, even though they had not.
- Not publicly correcting the false announcement, even after being explicitly directed by the jury volunteers to do so.
The volunteers know, however, that the grand jury system can be successfully applied to the crimes of 9/11, as long as the procedure is conscientiously managed and monitored.
The volunteers from the April 14 experiment who remain in touch with each other stress the following:
1. Participants (e.g. prosecutor, witnesses, jurors) can be proactively, constructively supported by a conscientious non-judgmental team to accomplish great work.
2. It’s likely that no one has yet effectively connected evidence of what happened on 9/11 to specific people who should be investigated to determine who is responsible for any 9/11 crimes. But it’s ESSENTIAL that an effective, articulate, credible presentation of evidence that shows probable cause to charge specific people with specific crimes be produced if all the right people are ever going to be convicted and punished for all the right crimes.
3. It is ESSENTIAL that anybody who might ever serve on a 9/11 grand jury know in advance of serving how a grand jury is designed to work, what a presentment is, what the prosecutor's job is, what the jury's job is, and what constitutes an indictment.
4. It’s ESSENTIAL that any future 9/11 grand jury be carefully managed and monitored to prevent it from failing, whether because of deliberate interference or well-intentioned incompetence.
5. Pitfalls any future grand jury should carefully guard against include:
- Carrying the jury out at a time (e.g. too soon or too late) or at a place or in a way that empowers that grand jury to stymie or interfere with the grand jury process and the possibility of ever conclusively and officially indicting the right people.
- The possibility that false public reports regarding the work of the jury or the hearing might be made.
- The possibility that public reports, whether false or true, regarding the work of the jury or the hearing might be made before the jury is finished with their work.
- The possibility that reports, whether false or true, regarding the work of the jury might have premature influence on public opinion and lead to public bias toward uninvestigated, unprovable, or false claims, and or against the truth.
- The creation of a faulty foundation that could adversely affect what happens, or is permitted to happen, at any trial that might ensue from a grand jury hearing and presentment.
That’s a partial list.
The volunteers of April 14 encourage all people of the United States to seek 9/11 truth and justice by:
continuing to reveal what happened,
continuing to educate the public,
disregarding what could not have happened,
proving what the causes could be,
proving what the causes could not be,
constructing bridges of evidence between what happened and how, to who could be responsible and who could not,
narrowing evidence to clearly demonstrate who is in fact responsible,
identifying and articulating the applicable law,
identifying the applicable punishment.
COMMENTS FROM ONE OF THE SAN DIEGO GRAND JURY VOLUNTEERS
Suppose that I really want to impeach Bush & Cheney, which, as it happens, I do, and so do millions of other Americans.
But I get this great idea. I go to my senior center and I tell my bingo buddies that we're going to impeach Bush & Cheney. I reserve a room at the library a block away, invite other seniors, print up flyers, and hold an impeachment event. I show evidence of many of the crimes they've committed. And at the end I ask everyone who wants to impeach Bush & Cheney to raise their hands. Everyone does.
Have we impeached Bush & Cheney?
Nope.
Would it have been more effective if I'd had letters or petitions to our elected representatives that everyone could sign, and then we made an appointment, notified the press, and went to each rep's local office to present our demands? Would we have accomplished anything? No, because they have to act through Congress where impeachment's off the table. So they'll listen, smile, thank us for our input, and that's that.
I think it is extremely important that other groups be warned about the possibility of sabotage of justice by means of the effort to reach justice with the grand jury system. Think of all the effort people will be putting into further grand juries, and the dismay they'd feel if they realize, as we did, that they had not been allowed to deliberate and that they had no say in the findings, presentments, or indictments.
LINKS TO INFORMATION ABOUT MANAGING A GRAND JURY
http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/recent/gjafr.htm
http://www.constitution.org/jury/gj/gj-us.htm
http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/recent/juror.htm
http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/recent/hnygjw.htm
http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/recent/lawrev.htm
Hat-tip to John McCarthy
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