I’m not asking for legal advice. I don’t want to share details of the case. I can’t - I don’t know what the charge is. I just want to know a little more about the process. Everything I know about Grand Jury proceedings I’ve learned from Jack McCoy and google…
I’m not the target. I’m called as a witness. Most of what I’ve been able to find on the internet since finding out I’ve been called relates to the target.
If you have answers, great. If you can just steer me to who I can ask that’s also great. Here are my questions:
Will I know that day I testify (or whatever day testimony concludes) if there will be an indictment?
How soon after the indictment (if there is one) would an arrest warrant be issued and executed?
Any sense of how long it might be between an arrest and a trial? Is there a hearing? or does the grand jury make that step moot?
No, probably not. Even after the end of testimony, there are remarks from the prosecutor & judges instructions, then the jury deliberates and decides. That can take a few hours, days, even a week or more in some cases.
Depends on the paperwork backlog in that court. Usually issued within a day or two. And serving it depends on the backlog in the Sheriff’s office. More serious, high-profile crimes will speed this up – it gets moved ahead of other pending cases.
Entirely dependent on the seriousness of the crime, and the backlog of cases in that jurisdiction.
Some grand juries have judges or magistrates and some don’t. Regarding time, I suppose it would also certainly depend on how many witnesses were testifying before the grand jury as well.
Even when an indictment is issued, generally prosecutors or law enforcement agents involved won’t notify witnesses of the indictment.
As T-bonham said, the time between indictment and resolution of a case is entirely dependent on the charges and the facts of the case. There will be some kind of hearings before a trial date, though it is likely that many of these will be status conferences to see where things stand in the case. If substantive motions are filed, witnesses may be called to testify about some facts of the case prior to trial, but if either the prosecutor or defense attorney needs your presence for that, you’ll almost certainly be notified well ahead of time. An important thing to keep in mind, however, is the general statistic that somewhere between 80-90% or more of criminal cases are resolved short of a jury trial.
Also note that in many jurisdictions, if a true bill is brought down on someone presently free and walking the streets (neither jailed nor out on bail), the result will be a sealed indictment – one known to the court, the prosecutor’s office, and law enforcement agencies but not available to the press or the general public until it is executed and an arrest made in reliance on it.