Do Overs

I have a three year-old granddaughter who is very big on “Do Overs.” She likes to wake up adults in the morning and if you get up ahead of her, you have to get back into bed and pretend you’re asleep so she can still wake you up. The same is true of unwrapping a present. She likes to help. If you unwrap a gift in front of her without her help, she’ll make you re-wrap it so that she can help you unwrap it.
Earlier this year an anti-abortion group based in California secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials agreeing to sell fetal body parts for profit. Planned Parenthood officials charged that the recordings were heavily edited and created a misleading account of the interviews with the filmmakers, who themselves posed as willing purchasers.
The ensuing uproar led to demands that the U.S. government defund Planned Parenthood and one candidate for President, Carley Fiorina, claimed the video showed a live aborted fetus, when it plainly did not. The Lieutenant-Governor of Texas demanded that the District Attorney of Harris County based in Houston open a grand jury investigation of Planned Parenthood to see if criminal charges against the organization and its officials were warranted. Both public officials are registered Republicans too.
In one of those “Be Careful What You Ask For” moments that we rarely see, the grand jury did bring criminal charges. It indicted two members of the anti-abortion group for their conduct in making the videos and cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.
Now, the lawyers representing the indicted anti-abortion activists want a “do over.” They contend that the grand jury became a “run-away” grand jury that indicted the wrong parties. They want a “do over” in which a second grand jury is empaneled.
A “run-away” grand jury is a grand jury which ignores the wishes of a prosecutor and its members decide for themselves who and what it will investigate. They are historically rare and were most often seen in the last century when some of them decided to investigate official corruption in various localities like New York City on their own.
Since members of a grand jury are the sole determiners of both the credibility of witnesses and what facts occurred, it is hard to see how the findings of this grand jury and the charges it brought are flawed. This is particularly so because a grand jury cannot take any official action unless a majority of its members are in agreement.
Following indictment a judge may examine the evidence that was presented to the grand jury to see if it is legally sufficient to support the criminal charges lodged but getting “do over” in which charges are represented to another grand jury absent a finding that the evidence is insufficient is unheard of.
The Harris County prosecutor who describes herself as “pro-life,” has declared that her office is “open to hearing the lawyers concerns” and her spokesperson has suggested that “Sometimes justice is served by dismissing cases.”
That would be the ultimate “do over” and would hardly inspire confidence in the justice system.
It’s far more serious that waking someone up or unwrapping a present.