Disclaimer: I do not have a law degree, so this post is more in the way of field notes. It mainly concerns grand juries in the US. Keep in mind that each state has its own rules. Corrections are welcomed.
A grand jury (since 1166) is made up of 12 to 23 people. It is used by public prosecutors, sometimes judges, to look into possible wrongdoing, generally a serious crime like murder, rape or fraud. They do not determine guilt, but whether there should be a trial.
Grand juries can issue an indictment. It lists which people are to be brought to trial charged with what crimes.
Judges can also determine whether there should be a trial by holding a preliminary hearing with the lawyers from both sides.
Public prosecutors (county prosecutors, district attorneys, state attorneys, etc) can also bring charges on their own if there is enough evidence to persuade the judge during a preliminary hearing – even when the grand jury returns no indictment.
Grand juries go back to the 1100s when England moved to trial by jury. It was part of Common Law. Both the Magna Carta (1215) and the United States Constitution (1787) allow for grand juries. Till at least the 1880s only men of substance served on them. Grand juries were common in most English-speaking lands till the early 1900s. They are now mainly a US thing.
Unlike trial juries, grand juries:
- Can call and question witnesses.
- Can request evidence.
- Are not sequestered in a hotel – they can read the newspaper, watch television, google the Internet, talk to friends, etc.
- Meet only once a week or so.
- Can last for over a year, hearing different cases.
- Do not have to all agree to an indictment. Two-thirds is often enough.
Unlike trials, grand jury hearings:
- Do not determine guilt.
- Do not have a judge in most cases.
- Are mostly held in secret.
- Present only the prosecutor’s side of the story.
- Rarely question the accused.
- Have a lower level of proof.
They are missing many of the safeguards of a trial jury. The thinking is that even if they make a mistake, the accused will still get their day in court and be able to defend themselves.
Grand jury hearings are held in secret to allow witnesses to speak freely, to protect the good name of the accused. Sometimes part of the proceedings are made public after the hearing is over.
Grand juries almost always agree with prosecutors – because they hear only their side of the story. That is why they say you can indict a ham sandwich.
Police brutality: Public prosecutors are in bed with the police: they work with them and depend on them. That creates a conflict of interest when the police commit a crime. Throwing it to a grand jury gives an appearance of fairness, but because grand juries rarely disagree with prosecutors, it becomes a way to avoid bringing charges. That is how the police officers who killed Michael Brown, Eric Garner and John Crawford avoided arrest, trial and prison.
– Abagond, 2014, 2015.
See also:
Good overview. I don’t think you need a law degree to state the facts. Only correction I see would be “country” should probably be “county.”
Personally, I don’t like the idea of legally untrained people making any type of judicial decisions, especially when they’re only hearing the prosecutor’s side of the story.
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“Police brutality: Public prosecutors are in bed with the police: they work with them and depend on them. That creates a conflict of interest when the police commit a crime.”
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Who among us does NOT work with and depend on the police? Maybe we should have a “day without police” to determine who needs and DEPENDS on the police most?
“Throwing it to a grand jury gives an appearance of fairness, but because grand juries rarely disagree with prosecutors, it becomes a way to avoid bringing charges. That is how the police officers who killed Michael Brown, Eric Garner and John Crawford avoided arrest, trial and prison.”
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Who better than a group of your peers to make this decision?
Diplomats from the United Nations?
Cardinals from The Vatican?
Flip a coin?
The grand jury process was “invented” by white people to compensate for the FACT white people don’t trust white people.
can anybody suggest a BETTER process?
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..Excellent articles and in-depth perspective concerning these over-lapping tragedies (R.I.P. Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner and toooo many others that have been wrongfully slain)-keep uP the good work, Abagond!!!
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Abagond…You must have heard me thinking! Watching the protests in NY last night, I wondered aloud, “How do grand juries work exactly?”
After reading your post earlier, I was driving to the store to get some cigs this evening, listening to CBC Radio — it seems, they heard me too! Here’s the link. Hope the supplemental info helps us all be clear (Yes, pun was intended! :-D) about this BS, DA-controlled proceeding:
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/ID/2626521063/
Peace…
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@ resw77 @ Kiwi
Right, county not country. Thanks for the correction.
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So what has replaced them in the English speaking countries? Can we see a comparison? Do they work?
Just looking at HK recently. Police who dragged a social worker from the protest area to a dark corner and kicked and beat him were actually arrested. Police caught on camera dressed in plain clothes and acted as a thug to incite violence were released from the force.
They don’t need grand juries for an indictment.
I hope the Mayor DiBlasio does not let the NYC police chief talk him out of his reform proposal. The morale of the police department is not sufficient reason to avoid reform.
Suggest that
– police must be required to release all of their information (name, number) to anyone they confront, first verbally, then later in writing.
– all citizens are allowed to file police complaints
– a department completely independent of the police (maybe from the mayor’s office) be set up to police the police, They also investigate the police complaints without any hindrance from the police. If police block the investigation, then a complaint is served against them too. Any police willfully obstructing this investigation will be charged with obstructing justice.
– This dept has authority OVER the police dept, including the Chief of Police. They have the authority to arrest police without grand jury indictment.
– This dept could be headed by an elected official, or someone appointed by the mayor.
Cannot trust the police to police the police.
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“Sometimes part of the proceedings are made public after the hearing is over.”
A number of legal scholars have declared the Ferguson grand jury to be among the most thorough in US history. The prosecutor was exceptionally thorough because he didn’t want anyone to say he didn’t present all the evidence.
“Grand juries almost always agree with prosecutors – because they hear only their side of the story.”
Grand juries almost always agree with prosecutors because prosecutors won’t bring a case unless they know they can get a conviction. What good would it do to get an indictment if they can’t get a conviction? Prosecutors are also required to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury. If they don’t they can be charged with a felony.
The only reason the prosecutor sought an indictment was to demonstrate transparency and show there was no cover up. Anyone with any sense knew there was no case.
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Grand jury = state sanctioning of lynching.
The state, from the police department, to the judicial system and even the president is all backing the proceduralization of the murder of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The state has absolved itself of any wrongdoing. If we can’t look to the state, then aren’t we back to the problem we had with lynchings? We looked to the state to save us from lynch mobs and when the state is the one doing the killing, what are we left with?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/05/the-not-so-strange-fruit-of-racial-murder/
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It necessary for me to learn the basics of how grand juries work in addition to the information of this post topic.
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Big Momma
The only reason the prosecutor sought an indictment was to demonstrate transparency and show there was no cover up.
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True;
but I suspect it was pressure from the protests that “encouraged” him to proceed in that direction. Both Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cost their respective municipalities a few million dollars. Killing unarmed black males is getting expensive so I suspect police chiefs are sending a message to officers to try to find a “work around.”
Police officers have a difficult job. They are paid to deal with our failed social, cultural and political policies.
Nobody here would last 30 days as one.
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Big Momma
thwack:
What the protesters wanted was an ARREST, something McCulloch could have easily done. Instead he threw it to grand jury to AVOID an arrest. There was no bowing to pressure in this case. This was hardly the first police shooting he sent to a grand jury.
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@thwack
Nobody here would last 30 days as one? You serious. That’s assuming too much about the posters on this blog.
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“What the protesters wanted was an ARREST, something McCulloch could have easily done.”
It’s against the law for a prosecutor to indict someone without grounds. Nifong was disbarred and charged with contempt of court for doing that.
“Instead he threw it to grand jury to AVOID an arrest. There was no bowing to pressure in this case. This was hardly the first police shooting he sent to a grand jury.”
That it even went to grand jury was bowing to pressure. Since he had no grounds to indict the officer, putting it before a grand jury was the only thing he could do. It also demonstrates transparency by making all the facts of the case public record.
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This case and Brown’s is an invidious use of the grand jury process:
Marjorie Cohn explains:
In a normal grand jury proceeding, the prosecutor presents evidence for a few days and then asks the grand jurors to return an indictment, which they nearly always do. Of 162,000 federal cases in 2010, grand juries failed to indict in only 11 of them, according the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
***
Justice Antonin Scalia explained the function of the grand jury in United States v. Williams as follows:
[I]t is the grand jury’s function not “to enquire . . . upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,” or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine “upon what foundation [the charge] is made” by the prosecutor. [citations omitted] As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.
Every principle Scalia cited was violated in this case.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/police-killing.html
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I was wondering whether I could call a law invidiously applied illegitimate or not. It seemed a contradiction in terms. And then I read Chris Hedges on the subject. He said what I was thinking:
“This is what is taking place now. The corporate state and its organs of internal security are illegitimate. We are a society of captives.”
Yes. Yes I can make such a statement. I am in good company.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/a_society_of_captives_20141207
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@thwack
“Police officers have a difficult job. They are paid to deal with our failed social, cultural and political policies.”
Plenty of people have “difficult jobs that deal with our failed social, cultural and political policies”: teachers, lawyers, social workers, doctors, counselors, the list goes on and on. And police are police by choice. No one is forcing them into this occupation or to work in high-crime neighborhoods or majority-minority jurisdictions. They chose to take an oath to protect and serve in the jurisdictions where they serve.
“Nobody here would last 30 days as one.”
Speak for yourself. I know plenty of police officers, and if they can do it, so can I. I choose not to for myriad reasons. The fact that they’ve sought out that career path in no way means they are more suited than anyone else to be a police officer.
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“neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.”
The suspect doesn’t have a right to testify or present exculpatory evidence to a grand jury. However, the prosecutor is obligated to provide exculpatory evidence if it exists.
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Mike Malloy – Grand Jury Decides Not To Indict Eric Garner´s Killer (Mike in rage + execution video)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017231151
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Who is to say that there isn’t a database of “authority – friendly” jurors kept in waiting for such occasions? Such have to be “friendly” for a variety of raesons.
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Amy Goodman talks to Vince Warren on Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/4/vince_warren_on_how_police_officers
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Is it true there was a black female police sergeant present during the killing of Eric Garner?
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@ thwack
That is true.
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What did she do?
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@ thwack
It is what she did NOT do. She was in charge and should have stepped in and stopped her officers from killing Garner.
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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