Sonoma County 1991 Grand Jury

Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres, is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the theme Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, Welcome to Sonoma County in the 90s. We're gonna be talking about an institution that is very, very well known in California and in Nevada, we're gonna talk about the grand jury, the Snowmen County grand jury. We've had members of

the grand jury with us in the past and it's always been a very interesting program and yet I don't think nearly enough people understand the grand jury or what the grand jury does. So we're gonna try to clarify some of that for you today. We're gonna

talk to four members of the grand jury on the first segment of our program. We're gonna be talking to Dorothy Morris and Maggie Freeman and then a little later in the program and we're talking to Janice Dustin and john gertz and Janice who will talk to

the second sector is the foreman of the 1991 grand jury uh it's always a pleasure to have people from the grand jury here because I think every year we learn a little something more, we kind of go over what basically grand jury does, but we learned

a little something that we didn't know the year before. Nice to have you here Dorothy. I haven't seen you in a long time. Nice to meet you Maggie Pleasure. Okay, we'll get right to it Dorothy. You're the first person to answer why is there a grand

jury in Sonoma County? Well, rich actually, United States Constitution's Fifth Amendment allows all states to have a grand jury. However, with the California constitution, It requires that which means mandated that all 58 counties sees a grand jury didn't I said a moment ago, there were just

two states that mandate juries in each. Yes, that's correct. That's what California and Nevada. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So that's why then there is a grand jury and basically that's it. We don't have any choice. We've got to have you and

it's very important that we do an awful lot of good has come out of the grand juries in the past really has Maggie ready. What's the primary role of a civil grand jury? The main purpose of a civil grand jury is to perform a watchdog function

for the local citizens over city and county governments and the special districts that are in the county that they live in, Let me ask you when you say a watchdog, when you folks come on the grand jury basically, is that your, what is your mindset? If

you will. I mean, is it that there's a lot of bad going out there on out there and we're going to find out about it or is it that we're going to respond to? Whatever someone says, they think something is wrong about so to speak. How

do you, how do you think about, what do you talk about when you first start? I mean, I don't mean privileged conversation, but what are you talking about when you first sit down and talk about what you're going to do in the year ahead either of

you? Well, uh, My outlook as far as far as being on the grand jury, this is my second tour. I was on the 82-83 grand jury, which was on the fiscal year and now we're on the calendar year. My thoughts in the beginning was that I

was, I was selected to serve this time being on the grand jury. I had a different perspective. It was to find out how our county and city government can help the plane grassroot person. And so this is what I delve into regardless of whoever it is,

if they have a need, I feel that they should be able to contact the grand jury and with the complaint, whether it's founded or not. So this is what my ears are tuned into. Well, grand jury as I said before and I mean it sincerely serves

a very very important function. Uh mistakes are made things are done wrong. Uh They will never be corrected unless somebody is notified of it and somebody who has the authority actually investigate and find out whether there's fact to that charge or thought or report or not.

Maggie. Let's go back to you. What's the difference between a civil and a criminal grand jury? Civil grand jury will investigate the administrative or the legislative part of a county government or city government or or a special district. A criminal grand jury will listen to evidence

presented by a district attorney either in cases involving public officials, employees or police officers or any criminal case that he would like to present evidence on and they are to determine and if there's enough evidence to take it to trial, it sort of performs a preliminary

hearing type for am district you incidentally as I asked one of your question and the other one has any thoughts bio means jump right in where you were you about to say something on that? I thought I thought you were poised to give another. The grand

jury used to, Well I mean correct me if I'm wrong, didn't they remove the grand jury's ability to come down with criminal indictments and then put it back put back with 1 15 last year. Yeah. Yeah it's back where it was before in some counties the

district attorney is using the grand jury to hear indictments. The most notable one is the case of the Los Angeles police officer um beating issue down in L. A. Not too long ago. But our district attorney right now hasn't decided whether to present cases to the

grand jury yet or not. You know, you said a moment ago you served in the grand jury in 82 83 everyone and then you're selling 91. Uh have you served before? Uh Why did you want to or agree to serve on the 1991 grand jury? The

investigative nature of the grand jury is what appealed to me as a form to perform a community-type service. I like the idea of being able to research things or investigate things and that seemed like a good place to start and learn a lot about county government.

Have you felt that very informative? You just hope you can use all your knowledge within your years time. It seems like you'll be well educated at the end, but if you get a chance to use it at all or not, it's hard to say. That's good

to hear. How are jurors selected and how long do they serve? The process is really a simple one. The county Superior court indicates that they would like to. Let's go first of all, let's go with the calendar year. Okay, around november. There is a request sent

out to the news media asking john doe to apply to be a candidate to be selected for the grand jury. Alright. At that given time they're asked, they would request an application and this is sent to them and they're asked to give more or less sort

of a short resume of their abilities. Why, when, where that they, how they feel that they could fit into the grand jury seating And at that time it's approximately, I would say just a round number, maybe 100 and 20 say hypothetically 100 and 20 people apply.

Okay then the next process is to have a paper screening and anyone who's been in personnel would understand that you have some that are qualified, some maybes and yes, some that are just yes, really capable of doing this at that time. Meantime, you have your sitting

grand jury Say this is 91. You have a seating grand jury of 1990. So they select four persons That they want out of their fellow membership to be carried over to the next year. So we're looking at seating of 15 additional members to the grand jury.

So at that time after they have this total amount of people, they weeded outreach to about no more than 60 Of whatever the amount is, I think last year they ended up in 49. So these 49 are invited to come to the jury room in the

administration, yes. Where the regular, regular jurors? Yes, well, no, not at that time. Yes. What they do is that they sort of brief these 49 people as to what they have in mind for them to do. Then at that time they set up an appointment with

the judges of the eight or nine departments. And along with that, The sitting grand jury select people to go and help interview the prospective jurors. And then in that they pick 30. That's what I was thinking about, right? They picked 30 of the total And they

put these 30 names into the little pot. Okay. And this is done the first or second week of January of the calendar year and they pull out 15 to sit with the addition with the four that are already seated That are carried over and that makes

a total of 19 and then they picked at least five or six to be alternates in case someone is not able to fulfill their year. And that happens quite a bit. One of the things, how does a new grand jury know what a juror or know

what to expect? Well actually the orientation is a flowing system when they are number one, when they're asked to come into this jury room, uh, you have, sometimes you'll have the sitting foreman from the previous year to come in and talk and tell them his experience

and what he found that was successful for him and then when they talked to the judge when they're being interviewed, that's another point of orientation. Then after they're actually selected and seated, then they go through a full orientation is what's expected of them. So there's a

threefold process. You kind of well prepared at least you know what's ahead Maggie, how much time is required to be a grand juror? We have a formal meeting every monday and that lasts from about nine o'clock to anywhere from 4 to 5 o'clock in the afternoons.

And then as you get into investigations, you may have 2 to 3 committee meetings a week or interviews with people pertaining to your subject. And then you can do your own research on the side and that can take anywhere to 10, 15 hours a week. I

would think you'd have to plan on spending at least 2 to 3 days a week in some form or fashion, working on related grand jury problems for all of that devoted time. You must be highly paid. How much is it, how is how is the grand

jury? We get paid $15 for our formal grand jury meeting on Mondays and then we get $12.50 for each committee meeting that we attend. And then there's mileage if there's mileage involved. And so immediately after a year on the grand jury, you invest in a corporation.

Obviously very tiny corporation. Let's see. Doris does the grand jury ever conduct business in public. Um Similarly like to the board of supervisors. No afraid not. We're one of the few bodies that the legislature has empowered to meet behind closed doors And that's it. We're not

governed by the Brown Act which requires as the board of supervisors to give a 72 hour notice of a meeting. Everything is confidential. Some pretty delicate matters. Yes it is. Yes. Yeah. I've never been on the grand jury so I have not been inside but I

have talked to grand juries after they learned a lot about that. One of the things here before we come to a break, how do citizens contact the grand jury? Okay. I believe that we do have our screen which indicates that they can contact the Sonoma County

grand jury at 600 administrative drive. And I think it's room 105 J. Or else they can call 5 to 71160 which they'll put them into our secretary's office 75,271,160. Yes. And that way if they request, if they have a problem they can request and we will

send them a form to fill out which is a complaint form because this is what we take and it is very important that it be signed. We will not accept any complaints without a signature. We do not investigate rumors. That's correct. Uh You two are, your

visit has been all too brief but I'm really glad that you come down and talk to us. We'll talk to two of your counterparts at the moment. So I want to thank you Maggie and thank you Dorothy. Thank you. Yeah, we'll be talking to a couple

of counterparts. I hope you stay here in the audience. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back in just a moment. We'll be talking to two other members of the grand jury. We're talking to Janice, Justin and john Gertz. Just a fraction of what we spend

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and you can to write this down and I'll show you how you can help take a bite out of crime. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties were talking to members of the 1991 Sonoma County grand jury. First part of our program,

we talked to Dorothy Morris and Maggie Freeman and now we're gonna be talking to Janice Gustin, who is the foreman of the grand jury and john Gertz was a jury member. It's nice to have you both here. Hi, john and pleasure. Yeah. Uh we got through,

you were visiting with us here in the audience. We got to some of the questions that are important. We want to go to some of the others. Jam. I'll start with you. How does the grand jury set priorities and what they'll investigate? That's first part of

it. And then what areas do you have jurisdiction over? Okay, well there's several ways that we can decide what we're going to investigate. Of course, we always ask for citizen complaints. We want to know what the citizens have complaints about the county and the city governments,

what their concerns are. And also we'll take a look at what's been investigated by the grand jury in previous years and maybe pick out a department or an area that no one's really looked at for a while just to go in and see how it's running,

see how it's working. So those are the two ways that we do it. We also have jurisdiction basically over any agency or special district um in any city or county government that receives taxpayers funds. So we have a pretty wide range of jurisdiction. So you do

have indeed, and, and your priorities are important. Um, as I was saying, I think earlier, you know, repeat what I said earlier with their mistakes are made. People do wrong, people make mistakes. The public feels that it's unjustly treated or has been properly, uh, find charge

or what have you. And they should have, they need desperately a recourse. And the grand jury serves that purpose, doesn't it? Well, it gives them a public forum, but also we, if something's really running well, we like people to know that also. And you know, times

are changing and this county is changing drastically and there's a large influx of people, there's a large influx of tax dollars and uh, the budget changes. And we just like to make sure that the money is especially the money is spent properly and in the areas

where it ought to be spent. I think Maggie mentioned earlier the grand jury is the watchdog for the taxpayer, definitely. That's as it should be exactly what resources are available to a grand jury that would insist you in your duties. Well, actually, any department within the

county or the cities or the districts are available to us. We can make contact and interview any department head or any employee that works within the departments to secure the information that we need to carry on, uh investigative program. Uh, you know, many people, I asked

one of the other grand jurors About two or three years ago, I said just just grand jury have the attitude to get somebody and they said absolutely not that they only act on legitimate bonafide complaints. And most of the time when there's smoke, there's fire or

vice versa. Uh the thing is I have also read the grand jury reports for the last 20 years, at least scan them and run fairly closely through them. And I found that in many cases, grand jury winds up complimenting people. So it's not entirely a one

sided thing. I mean if they find that that something really is not a miss there, there's I've read paragraphs in many cases where something is commended rather than chastised. Yeah, people, yeah, there are a lot of things that are done right in this county and within

the cities And it's not all bad. We basically are there to review um not policies but procedures. And we have a wide varied background of 19 members especially this year. There's a wide age range also, which has not necessarily been true in the past, which great

gives us a different perspective um on what's going on in the county because of that age range that we have this year and and the different interest that gives us a varied interest and it's I think we have a great group this year especially and uh

a lot of knowledge, I want to stay with you for a minute here. To whom does the grand jury report? Well the grand jury actually reports to the Superior Court. We are a part or we say an arm of the Superior Court were seated by the

Superior Court. We take our oath from the presiding judge of the Superior court. He advises us what our duties are, what we're supposed to accomplish, how we're supposed to accomplish it. And so we report to the Superior Court. Yearly. Superior Court actually is sort of is

highly instrumental in selecting in the first place that isn't getting the grand jury together the group of people. So it's appropriate that john how our grand jury investigations and recommendations made public and if they are and how often well actually rich we can make uh publications

available to the Superior Court anytime during the year. Uh We do at the end of the year make a final report uh and we can make interim reports. As I said, the final report is sent to the Superior Court for their edification and if they want

to make changes and so forth after their approval gets printed and goes to the public. I see you know, every time I had the pleasure of having some of you people on. I've often said that I think that the complimentary that the grand jury is probably

the most annoying misunderstood or understood body in the county and yet you people are asked to investigate and give information if you will about some very, very serious charges and some very, very important matters in some cases of fun over misuse. What have you? Uh, how

can we publicize the grand jury more? I've tried to help in the past that I'm hoping that visit here will make more people cognizant of the grand jury. More people want to serve on it. For one thing, what else can we do? Well actually rich there,

there's very little that we, as grand jurors can do to publicize the things we do. In fact, there's nothing we can do to publicize it except forums such as this, um, television interviews, newspaper interviews and so forth. And actually that's the only way it can be

done. We can't make public statements that's understandable. But this is an excellent way of bringing the public, letting the public know what our objectives are and how we function and what we hope to account. But we should continue to do this. That's for sure. I would

say one thing we did do this year which has been done in the past, but we're going to try and pick up on doing again is we did hold, I hate to call them town meetings, but they were town meetings in several different areas and um,

well we met one on one with individuals since everything we do is held in confidentiality where people could come in and speak to a portion of the grand jury. There were several members there each evening And we did in the evening. So it was easy for

people who work to get to us and they could fill out complaints and they were each given about 10 or 15 minutes to state their complaint. And it did give us quite a bit of information on what's going on in the different areas of the county

and you find out different concerns in different areas. You make reports, you make interim reports and of course make a major final report who's required to respond to grand jury reports. Well any department or district that is mentioned in the report under the recommendation of the

conclusion and recommendation sections are required by law to respond as well as the board of supervisors, they must respond to every recommendation that's made and hopefully the the responses that come in, we always hope each year that they will take our recommendations and run with them,

so to speak. Yeah, well you take the time to investigate the thing. You talk to the people, you hear all the evidence, you weigh it and they can make make a recommendation as to the best possible way of of changing that undesirable circumstances so whomever you

make those reports to should be required to respond. Do they respond fairly rapidly or do they respond they have to respond well they do respond to us which in some cases it's slower than we'd like. And so I have been told in the past there are

some cases where they have to be prodded once in a while. But we do, we do finally get responses from every department that is mentioned. And the board of supervisors also do respond to us. They may not take all of our suggestions, but they do respond

and I'm sure that they they read them quite carefully. I know in in being over at the county center, I know that in the past few years, especially The supervisors have made a public statement that whoever has been sent a report or excited in the report

must respond within 60 days or something like that. I hope they're doing it, but at least they make that direct and in public. So we hope that they are uh we've got about three or four minutes left here. What relationship john does Sonoma County grand jury

have with other California grand juries? Well actually, we have a very friendly relationship with grand juries in California and if there is information that they need from us or we need from them, we uh we feel as though we can request it and we'll get a

response or they'll get a response from us in March. There was a seminar held in santa rosa that quite a number of the grand juries from throughout the state attended. And shared experiences and shared information. We had some great speakers there from around the state and

I think we all picked up a lot of valuable information and knowledge. You thought of that. Oh yeah, I was very high on that seminar that we went to. We we learned a lot from a lot of different people and because it was early in our

year which was March, we had just really gotten go and gotten our orientation over and we're getting down to um doing some work. We learned a lot of shortcuts in different ways and a lot of different avenues. We could go about to help us In our

investigations a minute. Why did you decide to serve on the grand jury? Well actually, this is my second year, this is my second. I was I was an alternate last year. I came on in April of the 1991 time. I'm saying, are you a left over

and over. Well, that's always a personal opinion. I'm sure the people that served with us. Um but uh I originally was interested in it because my of my political education background and um I had lived in the county long enough, I deal with a lot of

government agency. Was real interested in finding out how the county ran from the inside. So well, rich I've, over the years, served on various and sundry commissions and so forth. I was planning Commissioner Park for a number of years and on the school board. I enjoyed

doing public services such as this and it's it's interesting and this of course is more interesting than the rest because we're doing a lot of investigative work. I think it helps the community. I think so too. On behalf of the people that don't tell you, let

me speak for all of Sonoma County is saying we thank you for your time for the effort and for the good that you do and for all of your counterparts that have preceded you. Because I know of no grand jury that has not accomplished something. Believe

me, I've watched some reports for the past two decades. We're all out of time. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure. Thank you very much. Meeting both of you and I had a chance to discuss the grand jury. Okay, my name is Rich McGlinchey. The

program is Sonoma County in the nineties and we've had the pleasure of talking to four members of the Sonoma County grand Jury. I hope that you enjoyed it until we meet again. Good night. Good luck and good health to each and every one of you.