Lisa Falkenberg takes a look at who made up the grand jury that indicted Perry.

She’s a secretary at a state university. She’s originally from Illinois. She’s nearly 48. She’s black. She voted in the 2008 Democratic primary. Oh, and it appears her maiden name is Outlaw.

Della M. Tyus, the forewoman of the Travis County grand jury who signed with her curvy script the document that indicted Gov. Rick Perry last week, isn’t your typical Texas grand juror.

But is that good news for justice or another reason to be suspicious of the Perry indictment?

If you’ve read any of my columns lately on how Texas’ flawed grand jury system is overrun with monolithic bodies of mostly white elite retirees, socalled pillars of the community who travel in certain circles and have strong ties to law enforcement, then Tyus might be a breath of fresh air.

The fact that a Texas grand jury indicted a sitting Texas governor might be proof that the system isn’t corrupt, after all.

Then again, if you’ve bought into Perry’s proclamations that his indictment is politically motivated — “banana republic politics,” as his Houston attorney called it — Tyus might feed your suspicions that Perry was a victim of political retribution in a Democratic-leaning county.

Except, there’s no evidence of that, as of yet.

Sure, I’ll admit, it seems like a stretch to indict Perry for abuse of power for following through on an arguably deserved veto threat. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg had certainly disgraced herself and her office after her 2013 drunken driving arrest. And Perry’s threat to veto funding for the public integrity unit her office oversees unless she resigned didn’t seem outrageous.

After all, Lehmberg’s jurisdiction as head of the public integrity unit wasn’t limited to the Travis County voters who elected her; it extended to all Texas’ 254 counties.

Still, the indictment comes

just in time to sully Perry’s miraculous resurrection from the graveyard of presidential also-rans. And, as a presumed 2016 presidential hopeful, his only hope for survival is to cry political persecution.

But political persecution from whom?

The tiny Austin group, Texans for Public Justice, that filed the complaint? Even if the “nonpartisan” group does lean left, the director took his complaint to a chief Republican judge, a Perry appointee, who then forwarded it to another Republican for consideration.

Was it persecution from the Republican judge from San Antonio, Robert “Bert” Richardson, who appointed a special prosecutor to look into Perry’s case? Not likely.

Not playing politics

Was it persecution from Republican-endorsed special prosecutor, Michael McCrum? The defense attorney and former federal prosecutor from San Antonio has a stellar legal reputation, and a bipartisan one. In 2009, both Republican Texas senators backed his nomination for U.S. attorney.

That leaves us with the grand jury, of which Tyus was the foreperson.

In Harris County and other Texas jurisdictions where judges use the “pick-a-pal” system to empanel grand jurors, bias and corruption are natural byproducts. The judge picks a pal, called a “commissioner,” to go out and find some more pals to serve on a grand jury and supposedly mete out justice. The process, as I’ve written, has been outlawed in the federal system, and is still only used in Texas and California.

But it wasn’t used in this case.

Richardson didn’t ask a buddy to empanel the grand jurors. The members were randomly selected from Travis County jurors who answered a summons — a similar process to the one used to select regular trial juries.

Attorneys on both sides didn’t respond to my questions on whether potential grand jurors were screened for any conflicts or biases that would keep them from fairly considering the case. Tyus hasn’t returned phone calls or email, either. But a few other grand jurors have told the Chronicle that the indictment had nothing to do with politics.

And who is Perry to say it did? A presidential contender and a man facing two felonies, that’s who.

Even veteran criminal defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin, who has defended Perry, saying he appropriately used his veto power, hasn’t blamed the indictment on politics.

“This is not one where Rick Perry’s lawyers can say ‘this is Ronnie Earl at it again,’ ” DeGuerin told me, referring to the former Travis County district attorney often criticized for going after political enemies.

But he added: “The truth of the matter is that the grand jury hears only what the prosecutor wants them to hear. This wasn’t a case of a grand jury going out on its own and seeking evidence. This is a grand jury that’s led around in the nose by the prosecutor. That’s what happens with grand juries.”

No flaws here

Yes, that’s what happens. And I’m perfectly willing to criticize that process when the person doing the leading abuses his or her power, or when the process is flawed. But there’s no reason to believe that was the case here.

The worst we can assume about the prosecutor is that he was a hammer looking for a nail. Hire a great hammer, and he will find that nail.

Bottom line: None of us — not the talking heads on TV, not the armchair law professors, not the knowit-all newspaper columnists — heard what that grand jury heard behind closed doors.

From the cheap seats, the governor doesn’t appear to be a victim. Thus far, he seems to be the beneficiary of the best Texas justice has to offer — a fair, qualified prosecutor and a fairly empaneled grand jury of regular folks.

That’s more than the rest of us get.