Just listened to an interview on the BBC earlier with a law professor from, I think, Chicago. Based on what he said, the Grand Jury system sounds really antiquated and messed up - picked this up:
[ul]
[li]A Grand Jury is created from the same pool of people as is a jury[/li][li]Their deliberations are private[/li][li]The only legally qualified person in the room is the Prosecutor[/li][li]It is common practice for the prosecutor to explain the law and- crucially - what the Prosecutor has determined is evidence to the Grand Jury ….[/li][/ul]
There is no defined criteria by which the decision to prosecute is taken? Fwiw, this is not the same question as guilty/not guilty – that question is for the real jury. So, in the UK, for example:
Defined crtieria - check
Legally qualified people making legal decisions - check
Transparency - check
Accountability - check
I don’t think this kind of system is unusual in the developed world. Am I misunderstanding what happens in the US?
The decision to prosecute does have advisory guidelines from the ABA. They are not binding, but assuming your ire arises from either of the two recent cases… the same guidelines you quote as applying in the UK would support a decision not to prosecute here.
Specifically, you quoted with approval “…a realistic prospect of conviction” as to each defendant.
“advisory” raises eyebrows …
Accountability and transparency seem equally of interest, not least when a decision made on behalf of the public is taken in secret, and at least notionally, by a bunch of people with no legal qualifications?
Then your beef is with the concept of trial by jury altogether, not specifically with grand juries, because regular jury deliberations are secret as well (and that’s a feature, not a bug).
While the Ferguson incident may be ambiguous enough to lead to reasonable doubt, I’d think that the choking incident in New York, while maybe not a slam dunk, could be considered to have at least a “realistic prospect of conviction” for some kind of charge; maybe involuntary manslaughter or excessive force or something similar. Hell, it looks like both the left and the right are largely in agreement on that incident.
I understand that the police need some leeway, but there needs to be a line and it may have been stepped over in NY (and possibly Ferguson). If the police in that incident were within their legal rights to act as they did, then maybe there need to be some changes in the law.
Grand Juries are not used as often as they once were, and they are, in fact, often manipulated by the prosecutor. However, the key to understand is the Grand Jury doesn’t cause any legal jeopardy for the possible defendant. The prosecutor could have brought the case regardless.
Note that your code of Crown Prosecutors would also apply to in principle to their American counterparts - which is not to say they always properly or ethically follow it. (They’re lawyers and politicians after all.) Prosecution can be politically motivated, although I will refrain from mentioning anything because that usually derails threads. And of course a refusal to prosecute can also be politically motivated. Hence, the advantage of the Grand Jury is that it allows the prosecutor to lay out his reasoning before laymen and have the implicit approval of the community, without putting in the public record before the trial actually occurs.
To raise a point in the issue you brought up indirectly, the Grand Jury in the case of Wilson decided that there was not a reasonable or “realistic prospect of conviction”. The prosecutor knew this going in. He knew the physical evidence was not in his favor, that his “star witness” was horribly damaged goods due to being intimately connected to the defendant, involved in other criminal activity, and had changed his story multiple times. He also knew that Wilson wasn’t on trial for the rest of the Ferguson P.D going snooker loopy. The Grand Jury, then, was a way to bring this out in public and acknowledge that whatever the justice of the protests, there would not and should not be legal punishment of Wilson.
It would, however, seem to make sense that the decision to prosecute is something for the public interest - it’s the filtering mechanism for who goes to trial and who doesn’t - and therefore requires transparency and accountability …
On your first para - it’s the potential for manipulation that seems to undermine the system. Also, if a Grand Jury doesn’t decide, who does?
Para two, as per Bricker - if a Code isn’t binding, it’s next to pointles. A legal professional with a vested or other interest explaining the law to lay people in secret? What could possibly go wrong.
Para 3 - absent is an option to ‘prosecute in the public interest’, as per OP.
Can anyone list notable grand jury findings that were found grossly incorrect by subsequent trial or revelations?
I assume and recall of my own memory that grand jury findings leading to an indictment have a variety of outcomes; let’s limit that side to indictments that were found at trial to be largely false or baseless. On the other side, what grand jury dismissals have been found to be in error, in that it was found later that an indictment should have been issued?
Definitive cases not including those of the last year solicited.
On the other hand, making grand jury proceedings public would be hard luck for those investigated but never indicted due to a complete lack of evidence.
Bricker, I’ve been hearing that grand jury proceedings don’t attach jeopardy so at least in theory either of these cases could still go to trial. I don’t believe there’s any chance of that happening, but out of curiosity, could they? I’m not talking about civil suits or some sort of federal charges, could they be brought to trial in the same jurisdiction for the same charges?
There is no jeopardy, and a second grand jury (or a trial) would not be prohibited under the Constitution. However, in New York, once a grand jury has failed to indict, New York law requires the prosecution to show good cause and get permission from a judge before they are permitted to re-present the charges to a second grand jury. New York also requires a grand jury indictment before any felony trial may commence (unless waived by the accused).
Well, that’s true - there’s a lot of variation in the specifics by state.
Short version: you seem to be wavering between dislike people outside the legal profession making these decisions on the assumption that they are actually disinterested, professional and correct, and on the other hand disliking having only legal professionals make these decisions.
If someone thinks that the problem with grand juries is that the prosecutor could too easily tank a case that he would rather not prosecute, why do you think that the same prosecutor bringing a case to trial would result in a different outcome?
The OP is overlooking a critical facet of the grand jury system–the ability to get a sense of community standards. A grand jury is drawn from the same pool of people as regular juries for a reason.
Sometimes a prosecutor will use a grand jury as a means of getting a reading on public opinion. I have read of prosecutors choosing to put a case before a grand jury when they weren’t sure how the community would react to a certain person being charged.
The job is to investigate whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute based on criteria - criteria like a reasonable chance of success or in the public interest. ‘Who’ is irrelevant.
I return the Honourable Gentleman to themes such as transparency and accountability.
Back to the system: is there accountability and transparency measured against an established critieria in this vital public interest, or is it about one legal professional with a vested interest telling a whole bunch of lay people what they should do, based on what evidence he decides to share with them?
Eh? The jury can return whatever verdict it likes, the decision to prosecute is an evidential judgement measured against the law and based on objective criteria - again, made transparently and with accountability.