Justice Steven Barrett
The court previously orally granted Haste’s motion to dismiss the indictment, but gave prosecutors leave to re-present the case to a different grand jury based on the prosecutions’ faulty instruction regarding the defense of justification. The dispositive issue before the grand jury was if police officer Haste was justified in shooting Ramarlay Graham. The jury voted to indict Haste, rejecting the defense of justification. The court found a paragraph prosecutors inserted after reciting the Pattern Jury Instruction on justifiable use of deadly force was both incomplete and had the unintended effect of misleading the grand jury. It also stated prosecutors compounded their initial mistake with another, by omitting that Haste’s reasonable belief, not merely his conduct, should be assessed. The court stated by addressing only Haste’s conduct, while omitting a reference to the reasonableness of his belief, prosecutors misdirected the inquiry into whether Haste’s belief that use of deadly force was necessary to defend himself was reasonable. As such, "given the magnitude of the error, and the centrality of the defective instruction to the grand jury’s deliberations," the integrity was impaired and Haste was prejudiced by this error.
