[News] Citizens fear predatory grand jury investigations.

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Citizens fear predatory grand jury investigations.
BY ORNA IZAKSON

There's one really important thing Jennifer Woodruff wants a reporter to 
know: "I know nothing about the fire."

The fire in question was in the spring of 2001, the second arson at a 
Romania car dealership in Eugene, lit by someone ostensibly intending to 
support activists Jeffrey "Free" Luers and Craig "Critter" Marshall as they 
were prosecuted for torching Romania vehicles two years earlier.

Knowing nothing about the fire is important to Woodruff — a single mother 
living in the Whiteaker with her 9-and-a-half-year-old son — because any 
week know she expects a grand jury to force her to answer questions about 
it. More to the point, the grand jury can also compel her to disclose any 
details it wants about her law-abiding friends in a secret proceeding, 
without her lawyer present. If she refuses, she could face half a year in 
jail, separated from her son, potentially losing her housing and her job.

Grand juries meet in secret to gather evidence in support of officially 
indicting someone for a crime. The secrecy is intended to protect both 
witnesses and those erroneously thought to be involved with the crime.

But grand juries also have been used throughout their history as a 
secretive, threatening weapon against activists — on causes ranging from 
peace and independence to the environmental and animal rights movements. 
Activists subpoenaed to appear before the juries find themselves faced with 
the choice of relinquishing their right to privacy and free political 
association or months of jail time for contempt of court.

"We're living in a time period when big brother is attempting to get 
stronger and stronger, and will cloak itself in as much legitimacy as it 
can," say Lauren Regan, local attorney and executive director of the 
Eugene-based Civil Liberties Defense Center. "By calling it a grand jury 
investigation, there is some legitimacy to dragging law abiding citizens 
into court like McCarthy-era inquisitions to give up information on their 
neighbors or their political associates."

"If it's secret and government power is unlimited, there are no checks and 
balances; they're able to get away with a lot of abuses of our civil 
liberties," she says.

Government investigators turn to grand juries, activists charge, to compel 
testimony when traditional, informal questioning is rebuffed. And often, 
Regan explains, the questions asked in secrecy are very general, having 
little to do with the crime ostensibly being investigated.

"Sometimes they really are as broad as 'do you know this person,'" she 
says. That "puts the person who is subpoenaed in just a terrible position. 
You then have to give up personal information about someone who is 
potentially a friend of yours without knowing what they're getting at, why 
they're asking for information about that person."

And, she adds, the witness "has no right whatsoever not to answer."

That's what Woodruff faces in upcoming weeks. "It's just a crappy decision 
to have to make," whether to comply or face jail, she says.

At one point, she and two other women who'd been called to appear were 
offered a deal: an informal interview in which each could have her lawyer 
in the room, after which she'd sign an affidavit about her testimony.

Woodruff says she was so scared that she initially agreed. "That was the 
first time I cried," she explains, "when I said yes. I bawled for giving 
in. It felt really wrong in my gut. So in the morning I said called my 
lawyer and I said no. It's kind of like, if someone's going to screw you, 
you're not going to volunteer to let them screw you."

In the end, Woodruff says, the woman who agreed to the informal interview 
had to appear before the grand jury anyway, where she was asked not only to 
confirm her affidavit but also questioned "quite a bit" further.

"They tried to fool us," she concludes.

"If you watch the behavior of a predator like a shark, that's kind of how 
they behave," she says. "They come in and they circle you, and then they 
nudge you and see how you react. Then they retreat, and then they come in 
for the kill. They subpoena you and they drive by your house at least once 
a week with all your friends around, listen in on your phone conversations."

Woodruff says she hasn't fully decided what she'll do when she gets a final 
date to appear before the grand jury. She says she has community support 
for her son should she end up jailed for refusing to comply. And while she 
prefers to think as little as possible about the coming ordeal, she remains 
philosophical about it.

"As Americans, as resisters to anything, the biggest thing we have to worry 
about is incarceration, and granted that's a horrible experience." But, she 
adds, jail "is nothing in comparison to what people are having to deal with 
in Iraq right now, and many other places. The human rights violations that 
happen in other countries are devastating. And all we have to worry about, 
really, is getting locked up."

U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdall did not respond to an interview request for this 
story.

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