Do you believe trials are held with transparency and accountability? What, specifically, is the mechanism for accountability that is present in a trial but not present in a grand jury?
Well, they don’t have a whole bunch in common to begin with so you may as well ask what traits, specifically, do the Tour de France and Benny Hill share.
If it helps, one is a jury trial and the other isn’t a trial at all.
Transparency is only one concern, and has to be weighed against the core concerns of the justice system. Grand juries are largely conducted in secret because it is believed it would be difficult to get certain information if it was only available in a public forum.
Further, if a person who had committed a crime heard that the grand jury hearing was going against him, he would presumably make ready to flee, which has practical concerns.
Grand juries are a small procedural part of our system, and the attention on them misses the point. In both of the recent cases the prosecutor didn’t really want to prosecute. The reasons for that are debatable, but arguably in both cases the prosecution didn’t think they could win their case. Both were actually classic instances of where, sans politics, the prosecutor would just use his discretion to not prosecute. But the feeling was people would get even more upset about that, so even taking it to a grand jury was seen as “throwing a bone to the mob.”
Arguably a prosecutor from another district may be a better person to put in charge of cases involving local police, so that they are not having to decide on whether or not to prosecute someone whom they have some political entanglements with.
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.
[/QUOTE]
How is that different from the English system? As far as I know, if someone has been investigated but the police/prosecutorial service decides not to lay charges, they don’t make public that X has been investigated but no charges laid.
Transparency and accountability are important values, but so too is the right of a person not charged to retain privacy and reputation.
You’re the one saying that grand juries should be transparent and accountable (to something, who the hell knows what you mean by this). Now you’re implying that jury trials are also not transparent or accountable.
You’re quite simply failing to make your views understandable. I’m not sure if you simply don’t want to explain what you mean when you throw out buzzwords, or if you assume that we have unusual powers of deduction to take flippant responses like this one, somehow grasp your underlying point, and concede that you were right all along.
If you want a debate, you might want to try harder to explain and defend your views.
Grand Juries activities are NOT secret to protect the grand jury, they are secret to protect the targets of the investigation and those who are called to testify. As stated above the target and witnesses have no right to counsel inside the jury room nor do they have 5th amendment protections.
With no right of rebuttal or defense the information that would come out of a public grand jury procedure would be highly biased in favor of the prosecutors and could be extremely damaging to innocent people.
But in general people are calling for the abolishment of grand juries not because of their true function but due to the fact that the general public is kept ignorant of the main usage of them in the state courts in highly public cases. They are used to defer blame from difficult or complex legal cases. They protect the prosecutor and others from receiving the wrath of a lynch mob. In the case of Ferguson the deadly force case law was well known, The prosecution knew there was little to no chance of indictment let alone conviction. The ONLY reason they used a Grand Jury was to re-direct the wrath that would have been wrongfully been sent their way.
The saddest part is this whole thing is distracting us from the core problems we need to solve.
I will add that in most localities, if the people don’t like the job the attorney general or states attorney is doing, there is usually recourse at the ballot box.
Correct.
In the federal courts, where anyone who is charged with the felony has a right to a grand jury, the original purpose of preventing political prosecutions is more likely to be valid. In most states (all that I know of) it is the prosecutors who decide and if they were using the courts as a political tool they would never summon a grand jury. The only value in most cases is to separate a elected or appointed official from the decision to prosecute.
If we had a society in the US where crimes raise to the level of felonies for minimal reason we could have the same model at the state level which would be preferable IMHO. But being a country with an incarceration rate that makes Stalin look like a humanitarian would make this impractical.
Here is a Cite for Ravenman’s point.
Except for Alaska, Connecticut, District of Columbia, and New Jersey the chief prosecutor in each state is an elected position.
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/rpt/2003-R-0231.htm
Thus the current reason for the grand jury at the state level is not to protect citizens from political prosecution in the traditional sense it is there as a tool to separate the chief prosecutor from difficult legal realities and choices.
You seem a long way from getting a handle on the subject. I wish you well but if you struggle grasping to whom transparency and accountability is important, best we leave the conversation here.
Ofr course it is 
Was not a prosecution in the public interest, even if doomed to failure?
No, it only distracts us from the more root problems by perpetuating a witch hunt. To be clear I have no doubt in my mind that Michael Brown’s race factored in how Darren Wilson dealt with him, and I am fairly sure that Darren Wilson has serious issues with “race”.
But having a show trial with no conviction would have only distracted us from the core issues more.
There was not enough evidence to convict Darren Wilson under current case law. The energy and outrage from this event which should be directed towards changing the way we police in this country, both with levels of force an in relation to the horrible race bias.
The fact that so much energy is going into these debates about the Grand Jury system really demonstrates how a general ignorance of our legal system works is a useful tool to distract the public from those real and core issues.
Ofr course it is
[/QUOTE]
As other posters have commented, I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing. You keep criticising the grand jury process for a lack of transparency.
Bricker responded, correctly, that transparency would hurt the privacy and reputation of someone who has been investigated by the grand jury, but not been indicted.
You responded by repeating the theme of transparency, which I took to mean that you thought that even if a person has not been indicted, that should be made public.
If that is what you are saying, I disagree. There is no public interest in disclosing someone has been investigated by not indicted, considering the damage that could do to the person’s reputation.
If that is not what you are saying, please clarify exactly what it is?
No. One of the factors that prosecutors much consider, before unleashing the powers of the state against an individual in a criminal trial, is whether there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction. (The test is framed somewhat differently in different jurisdictions, but that is the gist of it.)
This is the same test which you cited in your quotation of the English prosecutions policy:
If the prosecutor does not think that there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction, based on their professional review of the evidence, then it is not appropriate to bring the person to trial.
There is some discussion of this point over in the GQ thread, Explain the meaning of the Ferguson grand jury decision?
A criminal trial is not a substitute for a coroner’s inquest, and should not be launched just to “clear the air.” The power of the state should only be triggered against an individual if there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction.
No. And in fact initiating a prosecution “doomed to fail” runs counter to the ethical guidelines for prosecutors.
Yes, but what about conciseness and fluidity? Why do you oppose those?
Do you believe someone (who?) is using the grand jury system to prevent a real examination of the policing protocols of Ferguson?
Yes, the process - I have made the point often - has to be transparent.
Identities of individuals is a red herring. The issue is the application of the law as measured aganst objective criteria, done in a transparent, accountable way.
If anything, identities have the potential to get in the way of that. Of course identities should be protected
No, I believe someone, DA Robert P. McCulloch is using the grand jury system to distance himself and his career from the ugly legal realities of the case.
I don’t know how I can be any more clear about this.