Former Prosecutor on New Information in JonBenet Ramsey Case: It's 'Very Unusual' for D.A. to Decline to Pursue Grand Jury Indictment
A new report from The Daily Camera of Boulder, Colo., is raising new questions about the 16-year-old mystery surrounding the murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey. According to the report, then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter chose not to prosecute Ramsey's parents, John and Patsy, even though a grand jury returned an indictment in 1999 on a charge of child abuse resulting in death.
Hunter said at the time he did not believe he had enough evidence to prosecute.
The report quoted an unnamed juror as saying, "We didn't know who did what, but we felt the adults in the house may have done something that they certainly could have prevented, or they could have helped her, and they didn't."
The Ramseys have always maintained
they had no involvement in their daughter's death on Christmas Day 1996 and were exonerated by DNA tests in 2008. Patsy died of cancer in 2006.
Investigators reopened the case in 2010 and still receive tips to this day, but there has never been a substantial break in one of the nation's most notorious unsolved murders.
Jamie Colby examined the new revelation on Happening Now with former prosecutor Faith Jenkins and criminal defense attorney Chip Merlin. Jenkins pointed out that it's "very unusual" for the state to have brought evidence before the grand jury, and then choose not to go forward with charges after the jurors had returned an indictment.
"You don't present evidence in a murder investigation if you do not believe that the people you are trying to indict actually committed the crime," she said, adding that she thinks Hunter was probably surprised when the grand jury returned the indictment.
Watch the discussion:
