Grand jury ends investigation without indictments

A Johnson County grand jury wrapped up its three-month investigation of Planned Parenthood’s Overland Park clinic Monday without issuing any indictments.

At a hastily called late-afternoon court hearing, the grand jury’s special counsel told District Judge Kevin Moriarty that the 15-member panel had examined all the medical information before it and saw no need to request further abortion records. In addition, retired Judge Larry McClain said, the grand jurors voted unanimously to withdraw their earlier subpoena for medical records.

The president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri said he was “enormously pleased” with the outcome.

“That affirms our contention throughout that we’ve had nothing to fear from this investigation,” said Peter Brownlie, who attended the hearing with two of his attorneys.

Two leaders of the petition drive that called for the grand jury investigation said they were disappointed but not surprised.

“We put the full blame on Judge Moriarty and the special counsel,” said petition drive spokesman Tim Golba of Lenexa.

The grand jury, which was seated Dec. 10, issued a subpoena Jan. 7 for the medical records of 16 women who had abortions in 2003. Planned Parenthood filed a motion soon afterward to quash it. Since then, District Attorney Phill Kline has been fighting to have the subpoena enforced.

But Friday, Moriarty agreed to a plan worked out between the grand jury and its special counsel and Planned Parenthood. Under the plan, Planned Parenthood turned over the medical records of the 16 women to the judge, along with a spreadsheet Planned Parenthood created with the pertinent information requested by the grand jury.

Moriarty verified that the information in the records matched the information in the spreadsheet and turned the spreadsheet over to the grand jury.

Golba and Judy Smith of Leawood, another grand jury organizer, said they thought Moriarty should have ruled on Planned Parenthood’s motion to quash the subpoena. That would have allowed the matter to be appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court, where it could have been litigated further, they said.

“For Judge Moriarty to insert himself into this process acting as the gatekeeper and them not seeing the records was very surprising to me — shocking actually,” said Smith, Kansas director of Concerned Women for America. “But having said that, we wanted a jury and we got the jury and we’re glad for that.” Moriarty said at Friday’s hearing that the easiest thing for him would have been to rule on the subpoena because then it would have been out of his hands.

Instead, he said, he chose to provide the grand jury with the information it wanted. Turning it over in a timely fashion, he said, allowed the grand jury to complete its work.

State law limits the length of a grand jury to three months. The grand jury’s deadline was Monday. Moriarty had the authority to extend it 30 days. But if the case had gone to the state Supreme Court, Moriarty said, he does not think it would have been resolved within another three-month period.

The grand jury met most of Monday afternoon, presumably reviewing the spreadsheet. Deputy District Attorney Stephen Maxwell, who attended Monday’s hearing with Assistant District Attorney John Christopher Pryor, declined to comment afterward, and a spokesman for Kline could not be reached.

Kline’s office argued all along for the enforcement of the grand jury’s subpoena, which would have provided more information than jurors ultimately received.

In a recent motion, Kline’s office argued that the subpoena should be enforced because a Shawnee County district judge thought there were problems with abortion records Planned Parenthood provided to Kline in 2004 while he was attorney general. That judge testified recently that he thought that former Attorney General Paul Morrison should not have cleared Planned Parenthood of criminal wrongdoing last June.

Still pending is a 107-count criminal complaint that Kline filed against Planned Parenthood last fall. The complaint accuses Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Clinic of providing illegal late-term abortions in 2003 and of forging, falsifying and failing to maintain abortion-related records. A preliminary hearing is scheduled in that case in early April.

During Monday’s hearing, none of the grand jurors chose to speak or to comment afterward. McClain told Moriarty that the grand jurors planned to write a report on their work.

The petition asked that the grand jury investigate Planned Parenthood in seven areas of abortion law. Court documents indicated that the grand jury focused its inquiry on the parental notification and 24-hour waiting period requirements. However, Brownlie said Planned Parenthood turned over information to the grand jury that related to all seven areas of concern.

Smith said she’s not sure what abortion opponents will do next. She said she believes they would have the right to circulate a new petition calling for a new grand jury.