14 DAY TRIAL // The case of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty queen from Boulder, Colorado, is once again grabbing headlines.
The girl's parents escaped indictment 13 years ago, when the case was prosecuted. A Grand Jury voted to indict John and Patsy Ramsey in 1999.
The document from '99 mentions child abuse resulting in death charges for both parents. She had been found dead in her home's basement on Christmas night, in 1996.
The Grand Jury's approval was not made public at the time, KWGN indicates.
“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,” one of the members of the jury said.
Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter stated at the time that he couldn't “prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant a filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated,” he said.
A legal expert for the Daily Camera claims that the prosecutor was legally obliged to sign the paperwork, even if he did choose not to take the case.
While Hunter did not wish to respond to the comments directly, he issued a statement noting that proper regulations were respected.
“Colorado statutes, the ethical canons which govern the practice of law, and the Boulder District Court's oaths, instructions and orders in the JonBenet Ramsey grand jury proceedings, are well established and absolutely clear with respect to the various participants' legal obligations,” it reads.
“If what you report actually happened, then there were some very professional and brave people in Alex's office and perhaps elsewhere whose discipline and training prevented a gross miscarriage of justice,” the Ramsey family lawyer, Bryan Morgan, argues.