Last week, I attended the quarterly Prosecutors Association meeting. This quarter it was held in Spokane so it was easy for me to attend. It is an interesting group of men and women representing very diverse areas of our state, but all of us share the same responsibilities in our respective counties.

The subjects of our meetings are generally about coming legislation, court rule changes and the effects of recent and not so recent Appellate court decisions. We also talk about the problems facing our counties and the statewide criminal justice system in general and specific.

This meeting we decided to be heard in opposition to a Supreme Court Rule change that would, in our opinion, damage the criminal justice process.

After a trial is over, it is very common for jurors to want to speak to the attorneys and to the presiding Judge, and it is very useful for the attorneys to hear from jurors about the case that was presented. To accommodate this desire, the Judge often will invite jurors to stay by and we all talk about the trial they have just been through. Especially when you have spent several days with jurors during a long trial, there are questions that jurors have and the attorneys have and it is very helpful to talk afterwards.

Some of the questions are about the trial, and why one witness could not say some certain thing, or why something happened. Sometimes jurors ask about whether there were other offenses or what the criminal record of the defendant or other witness was and why wasn’t there DNA available.

Some group has proposed a rule that would prohibit and make it an ethical code violation for an attorney to answer questions that a juror might have after a trial. The rule goes so far as to make it a violation for an attorney to even talk to a juror after a trial without the permission of the judge. The attorney could not tell jurors the truth about something that had been kept out of evidence during the trial, but what anyone sitting in the audience of the court could have heard all about during the trial. What a crock!

Our Constitution requires that justice be “administered openly.” The spirit of this rule is just the opposite. This rule seems to say, “Hide the truth from the jury during the trial, and then hide the truth from the jury after the trial.” One step forward, two steps back. We will see what they do. It will be a bad day for the search for truth if this thing passes and becomes the rule.