JAABLOG has been bringing you the best in fake journalism over the last few years.  Tonight we are departing from the proven formula, by featuring some real journalism for a change.  The following piece is an updated and greatly expanded original article by Joe Kollin, twenty-eight year veteran of the Sun-Sentinel, originally excerpted by the Daily Pulp back in April of last year.  Recent headlines regarding Mike Satz and corruption, together with Chief Judge Tobin's statewide corruption grand jury, have led Joe to elaborate on the age old grand jury pitfalls that have been plaguing Florida for as long as anyone cares to remember.  So, without further ado, please enjoy "Ethics Czars Not Needed ... If Florida State Attorneys Did Their Jobs", by the award winning REAL journalist Joe Kollin.

    Politicians who want ethics czars, inspector generals and task forces to placate us Broward residents about corruption in our local governments should check the law. 

    Broward, as well as every county in Florida, already has ethics czars, inspector generals and anti-corruption task forces with all the power and might of the state behind them. These watchdogs can subpoena witnesses and have them jailed for lying. They can indict any public official they believe violates the law, or they can just criticize them for violating the public trust.

    We don’t need more politically appointed bureaucrats, especially if it means having to give them subpoena power. 

    Grand juries are our watchdogs and they have all the power needed to root out corruption. Czars, inspector generals and ask forces would be superfluous.

    Yet county grand juries for years, especially in Broward, have been acting more like lapdogs than watchdogs.  That has allowed public officials to do as they please, knowing that no one is looking over their shoulders. As a result, the feds had to move in to make arrests in Broward corruption cases.  And it is forcing the state to step in, ironically, by empanelling a statewide grand jury to look at corruption.  

    County grand juries are made up of 15 to 21 residents picked at random from jury lists.  Members serve roughly six months and set their own meeting schedules. In addition to their anti-corruption role, they also look at death-sentence cases because no person can be put to death in Florida unless indicted by a grand jury. Grand juries deliberate in secret.  Members aren’t lawyers or politicians—they are lay people who represent all of us.

    To be fair, grand juries are told of their anti-corruption role by a judge who reads them a set of instructions on the day they are selected.  The instructions, approved by the Florida Supreme Court (431 So.2d 594), tell new grand jurors that they are “a deterrent to evil and corruption” and that “no officer or agency of government is above or beyond the reach of the grand jury.”

     The instructions also let them know of the “power to investigate the conduct of public affairs by public officials and employees, including the power to inquire whether those officials are incompetent or lax in the performance of their duties,” and lets them know that they are "a sword and a shield; a sword because the power of the grand jury has a chilling and deterrent effect on those who violate the law; it is a shield because of its power and duty to protect the innocent against persecution.”            

     Tell me that isn’t a mandate to probe corruption! 

    But the instructions are eight pages long, single-spaced.  Would you remember for six months the boring instructions that a judge reads immediately after you are selected for something that might take you away from your family and work?

    That’s why you can’t blame grand jurors for not recognizing their independent watchdog role.  Blame, instead, the elected state attorney, the chief prosecutor in each county, for grand jurors not knowing their watchdog role, said a long-time state attorney, now retired. 

     “It may not be a grand jury problem, it may be a prosecutorial problem,” said Joseph P. D’Alessandro, state attorney for the five-county circuit that includes Fort Myers and Naples from 1969 to 2002—eight consecutive terms.  He is now a partner  in a Fort Myers law firm, Goldberg, Racila, D'Alessandro & Noone.

    The chairwoman of the grand jury that served Broward most of last year, interviewed after her term ended, said the state attorney never reminded her panel of its anti-corruption watchdog function and its independence. 

    Lancea V. LeBlanc, 58, a federal government employee who lives in Sunrise, said she didn’t understood that she had the duty to investigate corruption in local government.  Had she realized it, would she have done so? 

    “I would have,” she said.   

    Why didn’t Broward’s state attorney impress on grand jurors their duty to probe corruption?  We don’t know. Michael J. Satz, who is in his eighth term as Broward’s elected state attorney, won’t discuss the issue, according to his spokesman, Ron Ishoy.  Satz was first elected state attorney in 1976 and is now serving his eighth term.             

    The reasons Satz and other state attorneys like to keep grand juries in the dark are obvious, however. For one thing, state attorneys aren’t immune from the watchful eye of the grand jury; the grand jury can investigate and indict them as well as any other elected or appointed official.  It hasn’t been unusual in the past for Florida grand juries wanting to investigate the state attorney, or not satisfied with his legal advice, to demand the courts appoint and independent lawyer as their legal advisor.

    Another reason some state attorneys want to keep grand juries in the dark: the grand jury might force them to prosecute someone they might prefer not prosecuting, such as a political ally.  

    Or the state attorney may fear a “runaway” grand jury, one that thinks for itself and could go off half-cocked. 

    D’Alessandro and his assistants—he ran five grand juries in five counties—kept each informed of their duties and independence.  So did the local media in those cities. As a result, it wasn’t unusual for grand juries to do what they wanted. 

    “They’ll tell us, ‘Please leave the room,’” D’Alessandro said.  “I’ve had them do it.”  

    Vigilant grand juries, based on what I saw in Florida over the years in counties where grand juries weren’t kept in the dark, could have helped prevent what’s happening in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties.  Public officials would have known that a body of powerful, independent citizens is watching them.

    If politicians sincerely believe that a new law is needed, maybe it should be one that requires a judge to meet monthly with every grand jury to answer questions and review their duties and obligations.  Or maybe voters should elect state attorneys who won’t try to control the grand jury.

    LeBlanc’s 21-member grand jury was selected and sworn in by Broward Circuit Judge Andrew L. Siegel last March 10.  Siegel orally read it the instructions, as he said is required. LeBlanc said that because grand jurors couldn’t recall those instructions, her grand jury did only what the state attorney wanted, .

    “It wasn’t our decision what was brought to the grand jury, we didn’t decide,” she said.

    She would have liked to know.

     “It would have given the people a chance to vote on what to look at instead of the state attorney telling us what to do,” she said.  “The grand jury would have made the decision.”

    So, doing what the state attorney wanted, the grand jury investigated pain clinics, issuing a 70-page report on the problem previously revealed extensively by the local media. 

    The state Supreme Court realized in 1981 that grand jurors can’t be expected to remember everything judges read and offered a solution, or so it thought.  It took action after the Grand Jury Association of Florida, a now-defunct Miami-based non-profit organization made up of former jurors, recommended giving jurors printed instructions.

    On April 16, 1981, the high court accepted the association’s recommendation and approved (431 So.2d 594) a handbook written in plain English for grand jurors so that they could take it home to review during their terms. [See the Supreme Court-approved handbook for grand jurors]

    The court approved the handbook in the same order as it approved the oral instructions (431 So.2s 594). 

    LeBlanc said she and her fellow grand jurors weren’t given the handbook. Whether current grand jurors received it in November when Broward Circuit Judge Lisa Porter selected them couldn’t be determined.  Porter didn’t respond to a request for an interview.

    The handbook tells grand jurors that their duties include investigations of  “how public officials are conducting their offices and their public trusts” and that the “importance of the grand jury's power is emphasized by the fact that it is one of the most independent bodies known to the law." 

    D’Alessandro, the retired state attorney, said that even before the handbook was written he made sure grand jurors were aware of their responsibilities. Most would have known, anyway, because the media in those Florida cities regularly reported the investigations grand juries conducted.  

    Other members of LeBlanc’s grand jury, and those selected for the current panel, couldn’t be reached to discuss their watchdog roles. Names of grand jurors have been considered secret since a Sept. 8, 1995 opinion by then-Florida Attorney General Robert A. Butterworth.  The opinion said that because grand jury deliberations are secret, the names of grand jurors also are secret. The only exception is the foreperson or acting foreperson who signs indictments and presentments.

    Until Butterworth’s opinion, the names of grand jurors were considered public and newspapers often published them so anyone afraid to report corruption to police or law enforcement would have someone they could provide a tip, maybe even a neighbor.  Every six months for 15 years I put the names of new grand jurors in newspapers where I worked and members have told me it resulted in tips about public officials.

    Would LeBlanc have taken a tip from a neighbor with knowledge of corruption to her grand jury for discussion?

    “I don’t see why not,” she said.

    D’Alessando said he wonders how state attorneys can control grand juries if the court gives them the proper instructions, gives them the handbook and state attorneys remind them of their independence.

     “The court picks 18 people and reads them the [instructions] that tell them they are the most powerful people in America, so they know they’ve got the power,” he said. “You can’t then go in five minutes later and tell them what to do.”

    Some obviously do.  

    “Grand juries are the backbone of our democracy,” he added “They have a tremendous function, such as investigating government, suggesting how it should work and making recommendations to make it more efficient. They don’t just indict people, they investigate even when a crime hasn’t been committed.”

    Victor Tobin, as Broward’s chief judge, is responsible for the Broward grand jury and has been appointed to supervise the new statewide grand jury probing corruption. He didn’t respond to a request for an interview. 

    Tobin has assigned Circuit Judge Robert A. Rosenberg to preside over Broward’s next grand jury. Its term begins soon—on March 19.             

                                                [See the state grand jury law]

(Thanks to Joe Kollin.  Let's hope he continues to class up the place with his thought provoking articles)