ATLANTA—After a naked, mentally ill black veteran was shot dead by a white police officer last March in an Atlanta suburb, the officer was allowed a privilege ordinary citizens don’t get, and even police officers don’t get anywhere except in Georgia: He sat in on the grand jury session considering the shooting and addressed the grand jurors without facing cross-examination.
Grand jury proceedings are traditionally secret, with the person accused of wrongdoing often unaware the grand jury is hearing the case. But Georgia law requires that a law enforcement officer be allowed to sit in on the entire proceeding and make a statement at the end that prosecutors can’t question.
Robert Olsen was a DeKalb County police officer when he killed Anthony Hill on March 9 while responding to a call about a naked man behaving erratically outside an apartment complex. When his case went before a grand jury last month, Olsen spoke to the panel for 20 minutes. His were the last words the grand jurors heard before deliberating.
Even though District Attorney Robert James won an indictment against Olsen, he thinks the law on police and grand juries has to change.
“It’s profoundly unfair,” he said.
Georgia is the only state that allows the officer’s unchallenged statement at the end of a grand jury session, said Chuck Spahos, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia. In some other states, a prosecutor can call the officer as a witness, but the officer is subject to questions and can’t listen to the other testimony, he said.
The law has drawn criticism, especially as police use of force cases face increasing scrutiny nationwide. Now Georgia lawmakers are proposing changes in a bill filed Monday.
Critics argue the current law gives an officer an unfair advantage that an ordinary citizen doesn’t have and makes it extremely difficult to indict an officer. Olsen’s indictment was among the rare exceptions.
The grand jury proceeding is characteristically a one-sided procedure and isn’t the place to hear from the accused, said Caren Morrison, a Georgia State University law professor and former federal prosecutor.
“The time to be able to explain the justification for use of force or the particular pressures that police have to operate under really is trial, not the secret proceeding of the grand jury,” she said. Morrison said it can raise concerns about favoritism and impropriety, which can be especially troubling when there’s a common perception that prosecutors don’t always try hard to indict officers.
But others say police officers frequently must make split-second decisions under intense pressure and should be able to explain their actions.
The officer’s perspective is different from other witnesses, said Joe Stiles, executive director of the Georgia division of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association.
