You may have heard of David Daleiden. He is the Pro-Life warrior who spent years conducting an undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood’s business practices. His company is called the Center for Medical Progress. The videos he captured show the hidden secrets of Planned Parenthood, told straight from the mouths of the abortionists themselves. Although most people who are engaged in the Pro-Life movement on a weekly or day to day basis knew of or suspected such horrors, few people outside of this group of Pro-Life warriors had any inclination that the Planned Parenthood doctors, nurses, staff and public relations department, had such an evil and distorted understanding of human life and the dignity of each human being. The evidence in the Center for Medical Progress videos shows us that Planned Parenthood was actively engaged in harvesting body parts of aborted babies and selling them to research facilities. Planned Parenthood doctors (such as Debra Nucatola) admitted to altering the abortion process in order to salvage hearts, livers and brains, in order to sell them to the research labs. Planned Parenthood staff members and subcontractors joked with each other as they sorted through the dismembered babies in order to harvest organs.

But Planned Parenthood is an extremely powerful organization with close ties to many powerful people in the federal government, political parties, media executives, entertainment personalities and most especially, marketing and lobbying executives.

David Daleiden has no such allies in his bullpen. Therefore, once the shocking and troubling videos came out, Mr. Daleiden was a marked man. With a bullseye on his chest, he was marked for martyrdom and the full power of the media, the federal government and the propaganda of high powered marketing firms came to bear on him. He was almost immediately dragged into court and shortly thereafter, pro-abortion politicians launched an investigation into his undercover operation. As you can imagine, all of the politicians and those appointed into lucrative positions of power by those pro-abortion politicians are attacking Mr. Daleiden because they get all of their campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood and other progressives, not from Pro-Life advocates. This would explain why it is David Daleiden (and his associate, Sandra Merritt) and not Planned Parenthood who just been indicted by a Texas Grand Jury.

So what does it mean to be indicted by a Grand Jury? Does that spell bad news for David Daleiden and the Pro-Life movement? No. And here is why:

The Grand Jury process is extremely biased toward the side making the allegations and very biased against the party being accused. Consider this: You are accused of doing something, so the accuser brings in 12 people and has an attorney, who is trained as a prosecutor, present evidence to these twelve people as to why the prosecutor believes you violated the law. During the entire process, you are your only advocate in the room (if you are even present at all, which for most of the hearing process, you are not present). You don’t get an attorney who sits with you during the presentation of evidence. On top of that, if you are present, and if you choose to answer the questions posed by the prosecutor, they can use your own words against you. It appears you can decline to answer questions that may incriminate you, but by refusing to answer, you may give the jury the impression that you are guilty.

The prosecutor can call as many witnesses as he or she desires and question them during the Grand Jury process. As the accused, you do not get to ask any questions of any witnesses. If anyone on the Grand Jury panel has any questions about the law or any interpretation of the law, it is the prosecutor who answers the questions and gives the advice. Since there is no defense attorney in the room, it is up to the prosecutor to decide what evidence gets presented and whether any of that evidence presented is favorable to the accused. In a case from the Texas Court of Appeals (In re GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS 198.GJ.20.), the court determined that a prosecutor has no obligation to present exculpatory evidence to the Grand Jury. This means that the prosecutor does not have to present evidence favorable to the Defendant. (See 129 S.W.3d 140 (2003)

On top of all of this, everything in the Grand Jury hearing is absolutely secret. Therefore, we don’t know who testified, what they said or whether or not the prosecutor provided any evidence that may have showed David Daleiden to be innocent.

Here are the rights of the accused in a Texas Grand Jury hearing according to Art. 20.17 of the Texas Annotated Code:

(1) “Your testimony before this grand jury is under oath”;
(2) “Any material question that is answered falsely before this grand jury subjects you to being prosecuted for aggravated perjury”;
(3) “You have the right to refuse to make answers to any question, the answer to which would incriminate you in any manner”;
(4) “You have the right to have a lawyer present outside this chamber to advise you before making answers to questions you feel might incriminate you”;
(5) “Any testimony you give may be used against you at any subsequent proceeding”;
(6) “If you are unable to employ a lawyer, you have the right to have a lawyer appointed to advise you before making an answer to a question, the answer to which you feel might incriminate you.”

The point is: Just because Daleiden was indicted, does not mean the prosecution has a case. The Grand Jury heard a very one-sided story. It is likely the witnesses were Planned Parenthood officials who are extremely gifted at distorting the truth and doing so in a very convincing way. If the prosecutor declined to introduce any evidence that favored Mr. Daleiden, the rest of the story remains to be told and I believe it will expose Planned Parenthood even further while Mr. Daleiden is exonerated in the process.