Two men dressed in suits sporting well-trimmed beards sat with their attorneys before a judge in the unaccustomed position of being accused of a crime. The fired sheriff deputies’ former colleagues guarded the doors of Courtroom C as they would for any other defendant.

Former Clear Creek Sheriff deputies Andy Buen and Kyle Gould landed on the other side of the law in November, courtesy of a grand jury called by 5th Judicial District Attorney Heidi McCollum. Buen was indicted on second-degree murder charges for what police bodycam video shows is him standing on the hood of Christian Glass’ car shooting five bullets into the windshield, killing him.

Gould gave the order to breach Glass’ car over the phone from his home that night and for that, he faces a charge of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in the New Zealander’s death.

Former Clear Creek deputy asks for dismissal in Christian Glass death case

Gould’s attorney objected to the grand jury indictment, telling the judge his client was put in this position by a citizen panel that was only presented with one side of the case: the prosecution’s.

“A grand jury is like a sporting event with nobody opposing you,” argued Christopher Broussard. “There were seven police officers beside the road in Silverplume on June 11, 2022. Kyle Gould wasn’t one of them.”

A grand jury is shown only the prosecution’s argument and asked to make a decision on charging a defendant on that information alone.

If a grand jury charges a person with a crime, they are charged by indictment. If the grand jury decides that no charges are warranted, then they give what is called a “no-true bill,” and no charges are filed.

Broussard has filed a motion for a probable-cause review of the grand jury transcripts for those reasons, but Glass’ parents are horrified that the former supervisor could go free if the judge decides to dismiss his case.

“They’re belittling the grand jury process, but this is the process of the judicial system of America,” said Sally Glass, who along with her husband, Simon, is from New Zealand. “He (Gould) gave the advice to breach the vehicle which led to Christian’s death. If it wasn’t for Gould, Christian would be alive because he was the one that said go-ahead.”

Grand juries like the one in Clear Creek are being called upon more often in Colorado when it comes to investigating disputable high-profile cases involving alleged police misconduct.

Though there are no official numbers, the Colorado District Attorney’s Council told The Gazette that more grand juries have been used in Colorado for police misconduct in the past 10 years.

In fact, there is so much interest among the state’s top law enforcement officers, the CDAC recently provided a workshop to spell out how to run them called “The Nuts and Bolts of Empaneling a Grand Jury.” “District attorneys have been asking for more training about the benefits of grand jury investigation,” said CDAC Policy Analyst Tim Lane.

Colorado’s upward trend

Since November, four Colorado law enforcement officers have been indicted by grand juries for two shootings and one sexual assault in three separate districts. All four officers are now facing criminal charges as a result of the indictments, but there’s no guarantee that there will be a conviction if any of those cases go to trial.

The Glass case is one of those three high-profile cases, two of which garnered national attention.

In December, a Jefferson County grand jury indicted Nathan Geerdes, a former Edgewater police sergeant, for allegedly sexually assaulting a female colleague in 2019 following a holiday party.

Colorado Springs police adopt new body-camera policy

Last month, after 30 years of no such action, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann made the rare decision to put a police use of force investigation in the hands of a grand jury in the case of last summer’s shooting in Lower Downtown Denver. Five bystanders were injured by police bullets in the incident.

Of three officers who were involved in the controversial shooting, only former Denver police Officer Brandon Ramos was indicted. He is due in court at the end of the month on felony assault charges, accused of firing into a bar crowd in an effort to question 22-year-old Jordan Waddy, who had been pushing people around and brandishing a gun.

According to the indictment, he “disregarded an unjustifiable risk of injury to the crowd behind Mr. Waddy.”

Polly Baca, who has known Ramos since he was a boy, is a veteran Democratic Colorado lawmaker and lives downtown just blocks from where the shooting happened. She said she doesn’t go outside after dark because of the crime in downtown Denver and feels Ramos was just doing his job.

“He was doing what he was supposed to be doing to get drugs off of the streets and guns out of the hands of criminals,” she said. “There wasn’t enough evidence to warrant a grand jury.”

Others, like Bruce Brown, who was the 5th Judicial District Attorney before McCollum took office, say McCann’s decision to use a grand jury was appropriate.

“There were multiple civilians shot and they were all wounded from one firearm,” said Brown. Each officer-involved shooting has to be weighed and each can be complicated. “Twenty percent, it’s a good shoot. Twenty percent, it’s a bad shoot. That leaves 60% where you want to convene a grand jury.”

Brown called on four grand juries to investigate officer-involved shootings and other police misconduct during his two four-year terms as the 5th Judicial District’s chief prosecutor. He said it takes courage to investigate one’s own police department because of the implicit alliance.

“It doesn’t make for cozy relationships and in the short term it degrades police and prosecutor relationships. But in the long term, it increases community trust in the justice system.”

What some see as courage, others see as cowardly. “It’s political pressure,” said Andy Buen’s attorney Carrie Slinkard, the founding member of Frontline Law, a firm that specializes in representing police officers. “District attorneys don’t want to make the decisions, so sometimes they put it in the hands of civilians.” 

Grand juries are different from trial juries. A trial jury will decide whether a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A grand jury has a lower threshold and must decide only whether there is probable cause to charge a person with a crime.

Slinkard said the Clear Creek grand jury didn’t hear evidence that she believes will justify Buen’s actions. For instance, she said that if he goes to trial for Glass’ death, she’ll bring up the fact that officers who responded to the volatile scene were suspicious that drugs or alcohol were involved.

She submitted a motion for a probable cause review of the grand jury transcripts on Friday.

McCollum’s Clear Creek grand jury lasted two days and had one witness, Slinkard said.

In a press release, McCann stated that she presented 17 witnesses and used 140 exhibits to the grand jury in the Ramos case.

Grand juries are secret, and it’s up to the prosecutor whether to divulge these kinds of details.

Officer’s point of view

What it means to enforce the law in a community has been changing rapidly in the past three years. It’s also been a huge part of the national conversation after five Memphis police officers were recently indicted in the beating death of Tyre Nichols.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus left a meeting Thursday with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris with an agreement on how to address the issue of policing in America in response to Nichols’ death, and expressed that the solution will come with legislation other than “thoughts and prayers.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., signaled an openness to discussing the issue.

6th officer fired after beating death of Tyre Nichols

So far, there has been little response from federal law enforcement.

“People don’t understand what it’s like to be a police officer,” said former Aurora homicide detective Craig Appel. Appel led the Aurora theater shooting investigation and is now a private detective. “People only call police when they are having a bad day and having a problem.”

Appel and others say the George Floyd killing brought public pressure for law enforcement – some welcome and some not so much. He said as policies and expectations change, police often don’t know what to do.

“Back in the day, we were proactive. We’d arrest somebody for probable cause. Nowadays, it’s very reactionary,” Appel said. “That’s part of why the crime rate is so high.”

Appel said that police departments are hurting for new recruits, so they’re hiring inexperienced officers who are sent out on critical incidents without proper training.

“Police hiring is challenging today. It’s a very rewarding job and challenging, but who would want to be a cop nowadays with the changes in our judicial system and society expectations?”

Brown has also noticed a change as district attorneys who ran on police reform in the wake of the George Floyd’s death are holding police more accountable for questionable criminal actions. The era of progressive district attorneys really started around 2005, he said, when early trends toward criminal justice reform began.

John Kellner, the 18th Judicial District’s chief prosecutor who oversees Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, said in an email that he uses grand juries when he needs help investigating a situation, but that “we do not use the grand jury to make charging decisions when we have all of the information necessary to make that call on our own.” 

Defense Attorney Ryan Brackley, a former assistant district attorney in Denver and Boulder who was also a homicide prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office, said that elected district attorneys who campaign on promises of holding police accountable often learn that investigations into alleged police misconduct are more complicated than they expected.

“These cases are incredibly difficult, particularly those involving officers who need to make split-second decisions when confronted with a person they believe to be a danger to themselves or others,” he said.

Some cases are clear-cut, but others may benefit from a grand jury to move it forward. Brackley cautioned “the grand jury should not be used as cover to avoid making a decision that will invariably create political, personal or professional tension.

“DAs are elected to make tough decisions. They should do so when the facts are there.”

Currently, Kellner has three cases involving officers, including one of the first “failure-to-intervene” cases after Colorado passed sweeping police reform laws in June 2021. Former Aurora police Officer Francine Martinez was charged by Kellner’s office without the help of a grand jury for standing by while a colleague pistol-whipped a suspect in July 2021. Her trial is in April.

The 18th District also did not call a grand jury to investigate the March 3, 2022, shooting death of a man whom Arapahoe County sheriff’s deputies found sleeping in the driver’s seat of a car they suspected was stolen.

Officers woke a foggy Jamarian McGhee, who put his left hand out of the window at their insistence, but not his right. During the incident, McGhee’s car began rolling backward toward a law enforcement vehicle, where a deputy was standing behind an open door for cover. Deputy Daniel Willmott fired three shots, one of which tore through the seat and hit the 30-year-old in the back.

McGhee had a gun in the car, but officers didn’t know it until they pulled him bleeding into the parking lot, where he died.

For McGhee’s mother, Jeanene, the loss of her son is so raw, she can barely talk. “I feel for those police officers for what they did to Jamarian,” she said, adding that she felt helpless when a critical incident response team decided that her son’s death by a police bullet was justified.

“But my son was on the ground for eight hours. Why would they want to do us that way? Why?”