S1E44 - Mo on Grand Juries

Episode Notes

Episode Summary: Mo, a criminal defense/movement lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild, talks about how Grand Juries are used by the State to destabilize communities, and what your options are for resisting them if you are issued a subpoena. Margaret and them talk about the importance of not cooperating with Grand Juries and how you can be an eternal badass...i mean protect yourself and your community by resisting them. They also talk about the most important legal strategy: Hope.

Guest Info:
Mo, Moira Meltzer-Cohen (they/them), is a Criminal Defense Lawyer who works at the intersection of Criminal Defense and struggles for social and economic justice. They work for the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Federal Defense Hotline. You can find them on Twitter @ProbYrLawyer.

Show Links:

National Lawyers Guild Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811 IF YOU RECEIVE A SUBPOENA FOR A GRAND JURY CALL THEM. (If you call you might get Mo!)

NLG NYC_:_ On Instagram @NLG_NYC

Civil Liberties Defense Center: CLDC.org for legal primers, brochuers and information.

Grand Jury Resistance Project: GrandJuryResistance.org

SparrowMedia.net: Chelsea Manning Grand Jury Resitance info.

Host: The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher: This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Mo on Grand Juries

Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And this week I will be talking to my friend Mo, who is a lawyer. And not just any lawyer, but the lawyer I know who got one of my friends out of jail when he was in jail for Grand Jury resistance. "What is a Grand Jury?" you might ask, and "Why might we resist it?" Well, that's the topic of this week's episode. So if you stay tuned, you will hear all about Grand Juries and why they suck, and what we can do about them, and what you can do about them. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's the jingle from another show on the network.

Margaret 01:48 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of what you do for work.

Mo 01:53 Hi, Margaret, I'm Mo. My name is Moira Meltzer-Cohen. My pronouns are they/them. I'm an attorney, and I work at the intersection of criminal defense and struggles for social and economic justice. So, I've probably represented a lot of your listeners.

Margaret 02:13 Hurray. Yeah, for context. I've literally had nightmares, where I get rounded up by cops, and I'm just like, "I need to call Mo!" And and then Mo comes and saves me.

Mo 02:26 I'll do my best.

Margaret 02:27 Yeah, I appreciate it. The only other phone number I've memorized besides like my immediate family. So speaking of friends of ours that Moira has gotten out of jail, I want to talk about something that happened a number of years ago to our mutual friend, Jerry Koch, which was that one time Jerry Koch was may may or may not have once been in a bar. And people in that bar may or may not have been talking about a crime that happened. I think, before Jerry even moved to New York City, but I'm not entirely certain. And that crime was that someone may or may not Well, clearly, someone did it. No one knows who did it. Someone bicycled past recruitment center and threw a box full of black powder at it, and it destroyed the door in the middle of the night, and no one was hurt. And because it was a federal crime, it became this huge deal. And so Jerry was subpoenaed to speak before a Grand Jury, and Jerry refused to do so. And as a result, he spent nine months in jail without being accused of any crime, and basically, like all of his rights were taken away. Like all of his, you know, First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were not enough to say, well, basically, they can try and make you talk even though it's not illegal to not talk to them, and they can still throw you in jail. And I wanted to have Mo on one because Mo was the one who got Jerry out of jail. But also because I think that it's useful for people to know about the Grand Jury process, kind of what it is, what it can do to social movements, and how we can prevent it from doing those things to our social movements as we fight for a better world. So do you want to tell me like, What is a Grand Jury?

Mo 04:18 Right? So the Grand Jury is anomalous in the American legal system, and it's, as you will see, it's so anomalous, and it so disregards so many of the core assumptions that most people have about the Constitution and the American legal system that I have encountered many people, including many attorneys, who have a really hard time believing that Grand Juries exist and operate in the way that they do actually operate. So a federal Grand Jury is an investigation where 18 to 24 people are called together in the same way that, you know, you get called for, like jury duty. People get called for Grand Jury Duty. And they hang out and listen to prosecutors to federal prosecutors present evidence about various criminal offenses and determine whether or not a crime has actually occurred. And in doing these investigations, federal prosecutors can issue subpoenas, which say, to whoever they're issued to, you have to show up to this Grand Jury and answer my questions in front of these 18 to 24 people. And there's really...and you don't get an attorney in there with you. And there's no judge in there. There's just the prosecutor and these people who have been called to Grand Jury Duty. And they can tell you to come and give testimony and answer their questions. And they can also tell you to come and bring various kinds of documents. And this is compulsory, whereas usually, you would have the right to decline to participate in a police investigation, which is what I talked about last time I was on your show, which is that you really never have an obligation to talk to police. Unfortunately, this is sort of the opposite, where if you are issued a Grand Jury subpoena, and you declined to participate, you can be ordered by a judge to participate, sort of, in spite of all of the rights you think you have, like the First Amendment, right to Association and Speech and Belief, and your Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent. And your Sixth Amendment right to have a lawyer with you, if you're being questioned, all of those rights kind of fly out the window. And if you refuse to participate, a judge might order you to participate anyway. And if you continue to decline