Tuesday, July 19, 2005

''Federal Leak Case Has Formidable Grand Jury -- It’s Mainly Black Women''

"In the new issue of Time magazine, reporter Matthew Cooper writes that he testified before a federal grand jury last week -- a panel that was predominantly black and overwhelmingly female.

"Grand juries are in the business of handing out indictments, and their docility is infamous," Cooper writes. "A grand jury, the old maxim goes, will indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it of them.

"But I didn't get that sense from this group of grand jurors. They somewhat reflected the demographics of the District of Columbia," he wrote. "The majority were African-American and were disproportionately women. ... These grand jurors did not seem the types to passively indict a ham sandwich. I would say one-third of my 2-1/2 hours of testimony was spent answering their questions, not the prosecutor's."-from the article on blackamericaweb.com.

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