Grand jury convenes in officer-involved shooting

A Clark County grand jury on Tuesday began hearing evidence in the fatal shooting of disabled veteran Stanley Gibson by Las Vegas police officer Jesus Arevalo.

The move could result in the first indictment of a Las Vegas police officer for an on-duty shooting in at least 20 years.

District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Tuesday he is bound by state law not to comment on grand jury matters. Las Vegas police homicide detective Cliff Mogg, the lead detective in the Gibson case, and veteran prosecutors Chris Lalli and David Stanton were seen leaving the grand jury room in the basement of the Regional Justice Center on Tuesday afternoon. They also declined to comment.

Sheriff Doug Gillespie, who two weeks ago told his employees by video that the Gibson shooting was tragic but not criminal, said his department is paying for lawyers, if requested, for any officer subpoenaed to testify. The sheriff said department policy allows for such support if there is no indication of criminal conduct .

Gillespie said he did not know how many officers have been subpoenaed or how many have requested lawyers.

Arevalo has not been subpoenaed but is represented by a Police Protective Association lawyer.

In coming weeks, prosecutors are expected to present more than a dozen witnesses to the grand jury. The grand jury could indict, issue a report clearing the officer, suggest that prosecutors file charges, or do all or none of those actions.

State law prohibits making transcripts of a grand jury proceeding public unless an indictment is returned, a call for criminal charges is made or the target of the grand jury agrees to have them made public.

The choice to present the case to a grand jury, instead of Wolfson making the decision, has caused concern among two groups usually at odds with each other: the police union and the ACLU of Nevada.

"I think it would be wonderful if you heard the testimony of the grand jury," said Chris Collins, executive director of the police union. "But the grand jury is a very secretive process, so we're not going to be able to hear the facts and circumstances of the Gibson shooting. Which, quite honestly, is a disservice to the public."

Collins and Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the ACLU of Nevada, considered the move political.

"Well there's no doubt that there are certain groups within the community who, for at least the last couple years we've been in this litigation, would love to see an officer at Metro indicted for a shooting," Collins said. "Is it a political move on his part to placate some of those folks? We may never know. The process is secret."

Lichtenstein questioned whether the district attorney's office is using the grand jury to avoid accountability.

"I would rather have had the DA come out and say, 'Either I plan to indict or I plan not to indict,' and take the public scrutiny either way," Lichtenstein said. "Now they can say, 'It wasn't the DA, it was the grand jury' that made the decision."

The credibility of the process and the public's faith in it are at stake, he said.

Richard Boulware, vice president of the Las Vegas NAACP, doesn't support a grand jury report because of the lack of transparency.

"We have no idea the process or what evidence is presented to them or what criminal violation would be reviewed," Boulware said. "No one is there."

But, he added, if the district attorney is using the grand jury to pursue an indictment, "that's different."

Nevada, like many states, gives police wide discretion when using firearms. Officers can legally shoot someone if they can show a reasonable belief the subject poses grave danger to the officer or another person.

The law can excuse officers who shoot unarmed people, for example, if a reasonable person in the same situation would have done the same.

Gibson, a 43-year-old disabled Gulf War veteran, apparently was lost and distraught in the parking lot of a northwest valley apartment complex early on Dec. 12, 2011. His car was boxed in by two police cars, but he wouldn't follow officers' orders to get out.

Police hatched a plan to remove him from the car: One officer would shoot out a window with a beanbag shotgun, and another would douse the interior with pepper spray. But, when the shotgun was fired, Arevalo fired an AR-15 rifle seven times into the vehicle, killing Gibson, who was unarmed.

Until this year, prosecutors presented officer-involved, on-duty shootings to coroner's inquests. Only once has a coroner's jury decided a shooting was criminal. But when prosecutors in the 1976 case took that decision to a grand jury, it refused to indict the two Las Vegas officers.

Other options for a review of police shootings include a grand jury or a review by the county district attorney.

Collins said the community moved to the inquest process from a grand jury 40 years ago because the public wanted transparency.

"There is a better avenue than the grand jury," Collins said. "I don't know what ... but I'm willing to meet with anybody to try to come up with a better avenue."

Review-Journal writer Mike Blasky contributed to this report. Contact reporter Francis McCabe at fmccabe@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.