Ed McClees recently helped secure a “no bill” from a grand jury on a sexual assault charge that turned his client's life upside down. This person retained Ed to represent him after a police investigator called him to get a statement regarding the alleged incident.  Through his investigation Ed discovered that the complainant in this case had made prior false allegations and Ed discovered other issues that affected her credibility.

 The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure requires that felony cases proceed to a grand jury for indictment before those cases can proceed to trial. Unfortunately, the Code prohibits defense lawyers from speaking directly to a grand jury and prohibits defense lawyers from even being present during grand jury proceedings. This means that the prosecutor gets to present only his or her side of the story, and the accused citizen is left without anyone to advocate on his behalf. Fortunately, we can often get prosecutors to agree to provide them with a written packet that they agree to distribute to the grand jurors.

In this case Ed presented the prosecutor with a thorough packet that not only presented a written version of his client's case, but also contained several critical pieces of evidence attached for the grand jury to review. After reviewing this packet, the grand jury in this case declined to issue an indictment, and instead issued a “no bill.” This effectively ended the case, and gave Ed's client his life back.