Court impaneling grand jury

SANDPOINT — A grand jury is being impaneled next month, according to 1st District Court records.

District Judge Barbara Buchanan signed an order on Dec. 13 calling for a pool of 32 potential jurors. Jurors are selected after being question about their backgrounds and potential biases.

The panel is composed of 16 jurors, 12 of whom constitute the body’s quorum. The grand jury is scheduled to be formed on Jan. 10, 2014.

Authorities are prevented from discussing the nature of the charges or who is being implicated until an indictment is returned.

Grand jury proceedings are conducted in secret. The panel has broad investigative powers to gather evidence, and can call witnesses and compel them to testify.

Grand juries can meet for up to six months or longer before deciding whether to issue an indictment. If the grand jury returns an indictment, the court issues an arrest warrant or summons and the traditional prosecution process ensues.

The last time a grand jury convened in Bonner County was in 2010, during a sheriff’s office crackdown on the sale of illegal drugs and an allegedly outlaw motorcycle club. The drug and theft charges mostly stuck, although the motorcycle club gang-recruitment charges were dismissed in light of a Idaho Supreme Court analysis of the Idaho Criminal Gang Enforcement Act.

Defense counsel in an unrelated case out of Caldwell argued the law was unconstitutionally overbroad because it criminalized association and free-speech rights protected by the First Amendment.

The high court ultimately upheld the law, but its analysis underscored the difficult burden the state must meet in order to gain a conviction. The analysis concluded that a conviction can only be won if the state can prove the recruitee was drawn into the gang specifically to engage in criminal conduct.

A grand jury issued an indictment in 2009 against Mark Richard Boncz, who was accused of molesting a 5-year-old girl in Bonner County in 2005. Boncz was convicted following a bench trial and was given a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.

A grand jury indicted Arnold Albert Dreier Sr. and Cody Dreier in 2003 on racketeering charges related to the operation of their former used car lot in Ponderay. The father and son were also accused of grand theft and failing to deliver title on vehicles they sold.

The elder Dreier was convicted by a jury and the younger Dreier entered into a plea agreement to resolve his case.