Members of a Liberty County grand jury abruptly dismissed prior to the final session of their six-month term are demanding answers from the people they believe are behind the decision to remove them.

Six people who served on the 12-member grand jury Dr. Jimmy Smith, Richard Pegues, Mary Terrell, Kay Roberts, Burma Chapman and Darrell Taylor met on Thursday, Jan. 24, with the Advocate to discuss what they feel led to their early dismissal on Nov. 29, just one month before their terms were set to expire on Dec. 31, 2012.

In the crosshairs of their suspicions are former Liberty County District Attorney Mike Little, who retired in December and now serves as Liberty municipal court judge, and Houston attorney Larry Eastepp, who was assigned to the grand jury as a prosecutor pro tem.

Little and Eastepp were asked to comment about the accusations being leveled in their directions, but both declined to comment based on the secrecy rule regarding grand jury proceedings.

The six grand jurors believe they were getting too close to uncovering information on cases that had been allowed to languish for unknown reasons.

One of the cases they were expecting to hear was the March 2010 incident of tampering with the mail of 253rd District Court Judge Chap Cain.

It is believed that as many as four persons may have conspired to access Cains mail and provide copies of a campaign contribution to members of the media in an effort to accuse Cain of accepting donations that exceeded the law. Cain, however, returned the check to the donor and requested another be written for the amount allowed by law for campaign contributions.

You have some grand jurors who have expressed that they dont know what they did wrong and then you have people like me who are not left with that question at all, said Richard Pegues, who served on the dismissed grand jury. I want to know who is conspiring to stop certain cases from coming before a Liberty grand jury. Well, its the runaway prosecutors to me.

The grand jurors were notified of their dismissal by certified letter. They are outraged that the reason for their dismissal was never revealed to them and has left a cloud of suspicion hanging over them.

We were summarily dismissed and it implies that we were doing something wrong, when we werent, said grand juror Darrell Taylor.

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Liberty County grand jurors angry over early dismissal