The grand jury and indictment

A grand jury is a body of as many as twenty-three persons, often chosen by lot from the citizens of the county or any other district where the court is located.

The life of a grand jury is limited to the term of the court, usually one year. The grand jury's duty is to inquire into crimes committed in that county and to make accusations, called indictments, in accordance with the law. Its legal adviser is the prosecuting attorney, whose advice the jury is free to accept or ignore.

The grand jury has the authority to conduct investigations on its own.

Except in federal cases, a grand jury can receive only legal evidence (excluding hearsay), and every element of an alleged crime must be proved so that all the evidence result in a lawful conviction of the defendant at a trial.

Your lawyer must really pitch in once your case goes to the grand jury. He must now do his best to find out how that paper bag got into the trunk of the car you had borrowed. He will need to talk at length to the friend from whom you borrowed it; he must find out when the trunk was last open. He should try to learn whether there are any fingerprints on the car or on the paper bag.

Your lawyer is going to have to find out a lot about the friend who loaned you the car. He will try to learn whether there has been any narcotics activity in the neighborhood. He'll have to question the parking lot attendants whether on the day you left the car there they noticed anyone suspicious in the area. To uncover all possible information that will help establish your innocence, your lawyer may have to hire private investigators, which will be expensive.

If by the time you are called before the grand jury your lawyer has been unable to produce any hard evidence that will refute the charges against you, he may well advise you not to appear before the grand jury at all. You have an absolute right not to appear, and your failure to appear is not supposed to put you in any unfavorable light. Moreover, if you appear before the grand jury, your own lawyer is not allowed to be present.

Let us now assume that the grand jury finds that if your possession of narcotics cannot be explained, you may be guilty of the crime of illegal possession. It will prepare an indictment: a legal document charging you with that crime. This indictment will be formally presented to a magistrate or criminal court judge at another arraignment.

If your lawyer has learned little more than he knew when he was first brought into the case, he will not be able to do more than appear with you and represent you at the hearing. You must be present yourself, because you are charged with the commission of a crime. He will almost surely urge you to plead not guilty, and the magistrate will set the case down for trial at a specific date. There are situations in which your lawyer may advise you to plead guilty to a lesser offense than the one you were originally charged with, in hopes of your receiving a lesser penalty.

If the bail set seems too high, your lawyer will ask the judge to reduce it. If you can find the money for the bail bond, you may return to your home and your job. If you should be unable to raise bail, you would have to remain in jail until the date scheduled for your trial on the court calendar.

In the case of capital crimes, for which the penalty is death or life imprisonment, the law does not provide for bail of any amount except in the most unusual circumstances. Some judges use their power to set bail as a form of preventive detention: they set bail so high that it cannot be obtained, thereby keeping the alleged criminal in jail to prevent him from committing another crime while out on bail.