Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [327]
** There was no impropriety in what the police were suggesting. In a 1983 case that got national attention, Alex Hunter had entered into an agreement with an attorney for a suspect in the murder of Sid Wells (a student who was dating the daughter of Robert Redford) that a grand jury would investigate the crime but would not return an indictment. The grand jurors investigating the Wells homicide were not made aware of this agreement. (As reported by the Daily Camera, November 22, 1998, p. C1.)
* This statement may have resulted from Boulder County’s infrequent use of grand juries and Hofstrom’s consequent unfamiliarity with their workings. In fact, using a grand jury to investigate a crime is a venerable and entirely proper practice.
** In Colorado and most states, a criminal prosecution may commence without a grand jury consideration, simply by the prosecutor’s creating and signing of a document called an information. In cases begun by this method, the defendant is entitled to a proceeding called a preliminary hearing, at which the prosecutor must present enough evidence to satisfy the presiding judge that there is probable cause to support the accusation. Unlike a grand jury proceeding, a preliminary hearing is usually public and is always adversarial, with defense counsel present and entitled to cross-examine and present witnesses.
When there has been an indictment, the defendant is not entitled to a preliminary hearing, on the theory that the grand jury has already made a determination of probable cause. Most defense attorneys vastly prefer their clients to be charged by information rather than by indictment, because the adversarial preliminary hearing offers them opportunities to discover portions of the prosecution’s case.
* Under Colorado law the court supervising a grand jury may appoint an investigator to assist it, and the individual may be “an existing investigating law enforcement officer who is presently investigating the subject matter.” Once appointed, the grand jury investigator may be permitted to sit in on a grand jury’s proceedings. In the Sid Wells murder case, Alex Hunter’s office had police detective Dave Hayes, who headed the police department’s investigation of the murder, serve as the grand jury’s investigator.
* The thyroid gland, situated in the neck, regulates the body's metabolic rate. Thyroid tissue is made up of millions of tiny saclike follicles that store thyroid hormone in the form of thyroglobulin, a protein containing iodine. When secreted into the bloodstream, thyroglobulin is converted to thyroxine and small amounts of other similar hormones. Sufficient dietary iodine and stimulation by the pituitary gland are necessary for proper thyroxine production. Metabolic disorders result from oversecretion or undersecretion by the thyroid gland.
* A disease caused by partial or total failure of adrenocortical function, which is characterized by a bronzelike pigmentation of the skin and mucous membranes, anemia, weakness, and low blood pressure.
* The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that no person may be compelled to incriminate himself, and it gives all criminal defendants the option to refuse to testify at trial or before a grand jury. At a trial, the prosecutor is not allowed to call the jury’s attention to the defendant’s failure to take the stand, or to suggest that an innocent person would have offered some explanation for incriminating evidence. But evidence of a voluntary statement made before trial may be put before a jury, as long as the defendant was not compelled to make it and (if in custody when the statement was made) was advised of his right to remain silent.
* Voir dire (a corrupted pairing of the French words for to see and to speak) is the law’s name for the process of questioning