Inside the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, there are 12 citizens who make up a grand jury.

Sworn to secrecy, they’re almost never heard from in public.

But a few weeks ago, this grand jury broke the silence.

“I’m appalled at the sheer incompetence and arrogance of our office of the district attorney,” Robert Ryan said.

Its members went on TV, condemning the DA’s office for refusing to pursue their indictment of a Texas Supreme Court justice.

“Now if that isn’t arrogance, you tell me what is,” Ryan said.

But for all that was unusual, 11 News noticed something about this grand jury that may be all too common: a lack of diversity.

Patrick McCann is a criminal defense attorney, and many of his clients are black or Hispanic.

“Your cases are reviewed by an overwhelmingly white district attorney’s office; their cases are held before judges who are overwhelming white,” McCann said. “You now, at some point that starts to make you wonder if the system can’t be done better.”

A grand jury is supposed to be a check on the power of prosecutors, reviewing cases before someone is sent to trial. To help ensure grand juries are impartial, state statutes say they must reflect the racial makeup of the community.

Judge Mary Lou Keel was well aware of the statutes when she first started picking grand jurors.

“It was not very successful; I did not have an ethnically diverse grand jury,” Judge Keel said. “I had an all white grand jury.”

All-white in a county where more than 60 percent of the population isn’t? Here’s why it’s happening. Judges pick what are called commissioners — usually people they know and trust --  and have them pick up to a few dozen people they know and from them the judges pick the grand jurors.

The result: “At least four of the grand jurors came from the same church, which was the same church as the judge,” Larry Karson said.

Karson is a former federal agent turned professor. In a study he did a few years ago, Karson looked through lists of jurors, finding that the few Hispanics picked were often relegated to being alternates who don’t vote.

He also found half of the jurors had ties to law enforcement, even to the District Attorney’s office, that jurors are supposed to keep in check.

“I found out the DAs office was literally handing lists of names to any judge that requested them of potential grand jurors,” Karson said. “Well, it means there’s no oversight of the DA’s office except by his friends.”

Could it be done differently? It already is in Judge Keel’s court.

She now picks grand jurors not with the help of friends, but from the hundreds of people who show up for regular jury duty, a pretty diverse cross-section of Harris County that the judge said is reflected on her grand juries.

“I think it instills confidence in the grand jury system,” she said.

But we’re told she’s one of only a few judges doing it this way, only a few trying to make Harris County’s grand juries look like Harris County.

No one at the DA’s office would comment on the record about the racial makeup of grand juries.