DA Fights To Keep Eric Garner Grand Jury Details Secret

It has been two months since a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death in July. Though pieces of information from those hearings have since trickled out, the transcripts are sealed; on Thursday, the New York Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Legal Aid Society, the Public Advocate's Office, and The New York Post will ask a Staten Island judge to release those transcripts.

Legal advocates have suggested that Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan purposefully steered the grand jury to rule against an indictment, noting that while a grand jury may not have been able to prove that Officer Daniel Pantaleo intended to kill Garner, a charge of manslaughter, assault, or criminally negligent homicide could have resulted in an indictment.

"That film very clearly shows the police officer choking Mr. Garner," Edward C. Josey, Staten Island's NAACP president, told us.

"Bottom line is, we're not quite sure what were the issues that Donovan presented to the grand jury that were so convincing to them that they could not come back with an indictment," Josey said. "Even former President George W. Bush said that he saw the video, and he was puzzled as to why no indictment came back. Bill Clinton was puzzled, so was NAACP."

New York law mandates secrecy in grand jury proceedings, and unlike the transcripts from the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri that failed to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of teenager Michael Brown, Donovan is not required to release the minutes.

Donovan, who recently announced he is running for Congress, may have seen it as politically disadvantageous to indict a police officer in a district so heavily populated by members of the police department.

All the more reason for more transparency, argues Public Advocate Letitia James: "What evidence was presented? What physical evidence? Who were the witnesses? Were they all police officers? What charges were presented if it was more than one charge? Did the grand jury only have one alternative to vote on, murder? What was the interpretation of the law, what were the instructions to the grand jury?"

James said that the minutes "need to be revealed to the public so that there can be some sort of trust in the criminal justice system, and in this particular case some sort of trust that in fact justice was meted out or not."

The aforementioned parties will present oral arguments in front of Staten Island Supreme Court Justice William Garnett tomorrow. The initial judge who was to hear the case, Stephen Rooney, recused himself because his wife chairs the board of the Richmond Community Medical Center, the hospital that employed the EMTs who were investigated for allegedly failing to help Garner in the final minutes of his life (they were later reinstated).

Donovan declined to comment on the proceedings, but his court filings argue that sealing transcriptions are necessary to remain "consistent with the presumption of innocence, which simply means that no individual should suffer adverse consequences merely on the basis of an accusation, unless the charges were ultimately sustained in a court of law."

The DA's office also claims that the release of records would endanger both the civilians who sat on the grand jury as well as the witnesses who testified, though the NYCLU has specifically requested that any identifying information be redacted.

"A substantial segment of the New York City community perceives the outcome of this grand jury process to be unfair and incompatible with video accounts of the incident that resulted in Mr. Garner's death," the NYCLU's filing argues. "The two interests of a 'compelling' nature that support disclosure of the grand jury transcript are, first, the need to restore public confidence in our criminal justice system and, second, the need to inform the current debate that has begun regarding the role of the grand jury as an instrument of justice or injustice."

Oral arguments will be heard at 10 a.m. in front of Justice William Garnett, 18 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island. The hearing is open to the public.

"All of us want to know what happened behind closed doors as it relates to the Eric Garner case," Public Advocate Letitia James said. "Because we all saw the video, and our eyes do not lie."