Johnson County grand jury keeps busy on unrelated cases

? A Johnson County grand jury, originally formed six weeks ago to look at obscenity cases, has yet to decide what is and isn’t obscene. But so far the grand jury has issued indictments in a high-profile homicide, an alleged mortgage fraud scheme at least a dozen other cases, including drunken driving, burglaries and thefts.

The group started meeting July 16 in Johnson County District Court to look at whether a handful of video rental stores and sex shops in Johnson County were promoting obscenity. But Kansas law does not limit the types of cases it can investigate.

While federal grand juries are seated regularly in Kansas, grand juries at the county or district court level have been rare. They have surfaced recently after the local chapter of the anti-pornography group National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families organized a citizen petition drive, calling for grand juries to investigate targeted businesses.

The Johnson County grand jury is the county’s first since 1989 and is expected to sit for three months. Wyandotte County also has formed a grand jury to look into obscenity cases.

But others have argued judges are better qualified to decide who should stand trial. They say defendants should have the right to hear the evidence against them.

In Kansas, a grand jury must be seated if citizens gather a required number of signatures from registered voters. The only other way to convene a grand jury in Kansas is if a majority of judges in a judicial district agree to call one.

Once a grand jury is seated, it is free to look into any case a prosecutor brings to it. It meets periodically in secret and at least 12 of its 15 members must agree before an indictment can be issued.

Grand juries do have their advantages, said Michael Kaye, a criminal law professor at Washburn University. But he questions whether judges like grand juries as much as prosecutors do.

“There are a lot of advantages to the preliminary hearing process, and judges see it,” Kaye said.