Or in other terms: What does a prosecutor have to demonstrate to the Grand Jury and how convincing does he need to be? It’s less than “beyond reasonable doubt”, is it less than “preponderance of the evidence”? It’s more stringent than probable cause, correct?
We have men and women in the criminal justice system who can give a more terminologically exact answer than mine, but pending their posting, here’s the idea:
The Grand Jury serves to indict for felonies. They may also bring down an indictment on a misdemeanor if that seems the appropriate thing to do, but (in jurisdictions which have retained it, including the Federal government) no felony prosecution may proceed without a grand jury indictment.
The point behind this is that felons lose a significant share of their civil rights – permanently, not merely for the duration of their sentence. Therefore, the weapon of a felony charge would be very tempting to a venal prosecutor against his political opponents.
So the grand jury exists as a means whereby you as a prosecutor must convince 12 out of 23 persons that there are sufficient grounds to bring the person charged with a crime to trial on a felony charge. It does not require that you show sufficient grounds to convict him, merely that a reasonable man would see it likely to suspect him of having committed the felony based on the evidence at hand. It’s sort of the reverse of “beyond a reasonable doubt” in the actual trial process – this merely requires “reasonable cause to proceed.” In other words, a very low standard is present – but the fact that there is a standard at all means that some degree of evidence linking the accused to the crime must be present, or no indictment will issue.
The misdemeanor qualification comes in because the grand jury may determine that there are not grounds to, e.g., charge the accused with felony assault as it’s defined in law, but grounds to charge him with misdemeanor assault, where the standards are not quite as severe.
For each case presented to it, the grand jury brings a “true bill” which gives rise to an indictment for a felony (or, rarely for a misdemeanor, as explained), or a “no bill” which means that the person may not be prosecuted for that charge (at least as a felony; some jurisdictions allow proceeding on a misdemeanor charge even after a no bill).
Probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and the defendant did it.
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/jury/faq.html
Sometimes the verbal formula is a little different. Apparently, in CA, the Grand Jury indicts on strong suspicion.
What GFactor said.
There’s a saying that I’ve heard that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to, “indict a ham sandwich”, if he/she were so inclined. That suggests to me that many grand juries are just rubberstamping prosecutor’s decisions. Is that a fair assessment?
Well, since the level of proof required for a grand jury to indict is merely “probable cause,” the prosecutor does not face a heavy burden. There is also no unanimity requirement: 3/4s of the grand jury is enough to return a true bill. Finally, the presentation can be a bit one-sided: the prosecutor merely presents his case. The accused does not have a right to question the witnesses called, and may not even have the opportunity to testify in his own defense. It’s generally considered unwise for a criminal defendant to testify in front of the grand jury, just as it’s unwise to testify at a probable cause hearing.
- Rick