Grand Juries

[AnnaMarie]

Can people help me understand a bit about this? We don't have them here.

1) Are there federal and state with different grand juries?

2) Is it lay-people, (jury of peers) or is it people who work in law?

3) Does a particular jury sit for a period of time, or for a specific case (like a trial jury)?

4) I'm pretty sure, sometimes a prosecutor will decide to go to trial without going to a grand jury. What would that decision be based on? (Or am I wrong?)

~~~

I retain the right to ask more questions.

 

[fljoe0]

Can people help me understand a bit about this? We don't have them here.

1) Are there federal and state with different grand juries?

2) Is it lay-people, (jury of peers) or is it people who work in law?

3) Does a particular jury sit for a period of time, or for a specific case (like a trial jury)?

4) I'm pretty sure, sometimes a prosecutor will decide to go to trial without going to a grand jury. What would that decision be based on? (Or am I wrong?)

~~~

I retain the right to ask more questions.

1. yes
2. lay-people
3. yes
4. ?

My understanding is that the purpose of the grand jury is kind of a safety net to stop over zealous prosecution from the government.

 

[blunthead]

Can people help me understand a bit about this? We don't have them here.

1) Are there federal and state with different grand juries?

2) Is it lay-people, (jury of peers) or is it people who work in law?

3) Does a particular jury sit for a period of time, or for a specific case (like a trial jury)?

4) I'm pretty sure, sometimes a prosecutor will decide to go to trial without going to a grand jury. What would that decision be based on? (Or am I wrong?)

~~~

I retain the right to ask more questions.

Grand jury - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[AnnaMarie]

Grand jury - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

United States
Main article: Grand juries in the United States

A grand jury investigating the fire that destroyed the Arcadia Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts in 1913.
In the early decades of the United States grand juries played a major role in public matters. During that period counties followed the traditional practice of requiring all decisions be made by at least twelve of the grand jurors, (e.g., for a twenty-three-person grand jury, twelve people would constitute a bare majority). Any citizen could bring a matter before a grand jury directly, from a public work that needed repair, to the delinquent conduct of a public official, to a complaint of a crime, and grand juries could conduct their own investigations.

In that era most criminal prosecutions were conducted by private parties, either a law enforcement officer, a lawyer hired by a crime victim or his family, or even by laymen. A layman could bring a bill of indictment to the grand jury; if the grand jury found there was sufficient evidence for a trial, that the act was a crime under law, and that the court had jurisdiction, it would return the indictment to the complainant. The grand jury would then appoint the complaining party to exercise the authority of an attorney general, that is, one having ageneral power of attorney to represent the state in the case.

The grand jury served to screen out incompetent or malicious prosecutions.[15] The advent of official public prosecutors in the later decades of the 19th century largely displaced private prosecutions.[16]

While all states currently have provisions for grand juries,[17] today approximately half of the states employ them[18] and twenty-two require their use, to varying extents.[19] The constitution of Pennsylvania required, between 1874 and 1968, that a grand jury indict all felonies (see Article 1, section 10).[15]

Are the specifics different by state? I thought in the Brown case the jury was 12. This article says 23.

In Missouri, would all murder case be required to go to the grand jury first?

And my question number three cannot be answered with a "yes". It's an either/or.

 

[Grandpa]

I can answer to some extent in regards to Colorado.

1) Are there federal and state with different grand juries?

Yes. I don't know how often Federal grand juries are used. I think it's for big or complex cases where they want to wield massive subpoena power.

2) Is it lay-people, (jury of peers) or is it people who work in law?

Laypersons from society.

3) Does a particular jury sit for a period of time, or for a specific case (like a trial jury)?

In Colorado, they're empaneled for a year. They might never meet, or they might meet for something big. One term of a grand jury could hear more than one case.

4) I'm pretty sure, sometimes a prosecutor will decide to go to trial without going to a grand jury. What would that decision be based on? (Or am I wrong?)

Probable cause to take the case to trial. At least in Colorado on felony cases, there's a preliminary hearing at which the prosecutor presents evidence for the judge to decide whether there's probable cause to bind the case over for trial.

I retain the right to ask more questions.

I retain the right to profess ignorance.

 

[AnnaMarie]

Thank you.

 

[fljoe0]

As for question 3, I remember a friend of mine getting federal grand jury duty and he had to go for jury duty every Thursday for 6 months. He was on a jury for a number of different cases.

 

[GNTLGNT]