A fringe website featured the purported names and addresses of the Fulton County grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 others for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

  • athos77@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I looked at the indictment last night and noticed it included the names of the grand jurors. I dropped my head into my hands, knowing this was inevitable. I don’t understand why the names weren’t reacted.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Georgia law is that grand jurors names are public.

      Yeah, pretty naive. Or evil. Maybe both?

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It prevents loading the jury to get a specific outcome. That said, it should come with protection or a delay or something.

        • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Not saying it is, but showing me, a regular citizen, these names convinces me the jury wasn’t loaded? Does the defendant have no role in Grand jury selection?

          • DoctorWhookah@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            No, the defendant doesn’t. This isn’t a trial jury, it’s the Fulton County Grand Jury. The GJ sits for an extended period (maybe a month, someone step in and correct me if I’m wrong) and listens to cases brought by the prosecutor. The GJ job is to decide if the prosecutor has enough of a case to indict. It seems in this case, she did.

            • vortic@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              That’s generally right. In Fulton County they sit for two months. There were two different grand jurys here, though.

              There was a Special Grand Jury who met for 8 months and investigated the specific crimes related to the Trump case. They issued a report in January detailing all of the evidence that they heard.

              In GA, though, a Special Grand Jury can’t issue an indictment. The report was passed to a normal grand jury who heard all of the evidence, then issued the indictment. That grand jury was first seated on July 11th.

              source

      • athos77@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t know that. I wish they had a process for applying to redact, for cases like this :(

        • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Pretty sure grand Jurors are professionals in most if not all common law states.

          A couple of the peoples titles on the list pointed me towards that they are.

          Edit: I’m pretty certain I’m wrong. There’s something else I must be confusing it with

    • Infynis@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      There’s all kinds of laws like this that are super old, and really harmful in modern life. Like name changes having to be published in the paper, and home ownership being public information. Sorry trans people, if you want to legally change your name, you have to be out to everyone! And don’t even think about buying a house if there’s someone you don’t want knowing where you live, like an abusive family member or ex!

      They’re left over from times when information was harder to come by, and they absolutely need to be changed, but our governments are bad at legislating for modern problems

      • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        🤔 Is it possible for an abuse victim to buy a house through an LLC to avoid that problem? How does that work for real estate businesses?

        • Infynis@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          It is actually! I have a friend who’s dad is extremely libertarian (despite having been a marine?), And he bought his house under an LLC for pricacy’s sake. I’m sure it would work for less crazy reasons as well

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Interesting. I wonder if you could buy a home zoned for single family, sell it to a LLC that you run, then rent it out to two families (if one is your own) since it is now commercial rental.

            • Infynis@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              From what I’ve read, living in a house you buy yourself makes it lose most of the protection of an LLC, because you have “pierced the corporate veil”. All it really ends up doing is protecting your identity

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Unfortunately, while you’re citing lots of very valid cases of innocent people being victimized, I also think that the trail of information that follows people is very important for systems of justice.

        Imagine criminals getting away with white collar crime, having changed their name to make it more difficult for people to publicly scrutinize them.

        I can’t quite imagine what protections might make sense to keep trans people safe, and it’s hard for me to think about which group should be prioritized. Of course, ideally, we’d live in a world where anyone retaliating to someone’s gender transition would be headed for a hard time themselves.

      • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        As I understand this is the law of the state, it would’ve been illegal to not make the names public. The reasoning is based on transparency – secret jurors would make for less trust.