By Terry Vau Dell
Posted: 09/24/2009 05:37:34 PM PDT
OROVILLE - State prosecutors have dismissed charges against a former Butte County grand juror, after she apologized in court for having disclosed alleged confidential information to the media regarding a police excessive force investigation she conducted more than two years ago.
In her written statement, Georgie Szendrey said "my actions were based on my sincere belief that I was acting in the best interests of the citizens of Butte County and the Constitution of the U.S.
"I regret any inconvenience caused the criminal justice system and any distress to the 2006-07 Grand Jury," the Chico woman added.
Szendrey had been scheduled to stand trial next week on a single misdemeanor charge alleging unlawful disclosure of secret Grand Jury information which could have carried up to six months in jail. Because other former grand jurors could have been called to testify in the case, Szendrey's lawyer, Michael Harvey, said he was concerned that "to establish this crime, the Attorney General would, of necessity, have to disclose and reveal multitudes of Grand Jury secrets to verify the alleged disclosure of a few" by his client.
But deputy attorney general Barton Bowers said the judge had specifically limited such testimony to statements attributed to Szendrey in the local press.
"In light of Mrs. Szendrey's apology, the Attorney General's Office believes it is in the best interest of justice to dismiss the criminal charge against her, but hopes that this will serve as a reminder about the importance of secrecy in grand jury proceedings," Bowers said Wednesday.
Szendrey had been accused of disclosing information to a reporter concerning an excessive force complaint lodged against two Ridge officers, Robert Pickering and Timothy Cooper, with the 2006-07 Grand Jury by the family of an underage drunken driver. In her written findings, which were not included in the Grand Jury's Final Report, Szendrey concluded the officers failed to give clear commands or inform the 19-year-old ridge man he was under arrest before tackling him to the pavement and handcuffing him as a neighbor videotaped the December 2006 incident.
In a joint byline story that ran in the Paradise Post, Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register on March 6, 2008, Szendrey was quoted as saying that after her term on the county public watchdog group ended, she decided to turn over her findings along with printed excerpts from the neighbor's videotape to the suspect's lawyer. The grand jury information was later used in court to unseal Pickering's personnel file in two unrelated Paradise resisting arrest cases, both of which ended in jury acquittals.
At a pretrial hearing for Szendrey earlier this month, Butte County Superior Court Judge Gerald Hermansen sided with an attorney for the newspapers that the California Reporter's Shield Law basically barred the prosecution from eliciting testimony from the reporters concerning any information not included in the 2008 article, such as who interviewed Szendrey and when. On Tuesday, Szendrey's attorney said he met with the state prosecutor to work out a "joint resolution," which included the written apology by the former grand juror.
"I apologize to the court and my fellow members of the 2006-07 Grand Jury for any disclosure of Grand Jury statements I may have made in speaking to the reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record," the statement read.
Szendrey's attorney Wednesday said he has advised her not to comment at this time about the dismissal action. Her husband, Ed Szendrey, a retired chief investigator in the Butte County District Attorney's Office, said he was gratified that his wife's "high sense of justice ... was corroborated by two juries."
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Terry Vau Dell is a reporter for the Enterprise-Record.
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