[WS:] This is the main point. The whole purpose of grand jury is to decide whether there is enough evidence for the case to go to a trial, and not whether the defendant is guilty. In my opinion, this is superior (from a due process pov) to prosecutor's discretion whether to file charges.
wojtek
On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 5:32 PM, Charles Turner <vze26m98 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Ferenc Molnar
> <ferenc_molnar at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "A grand jury is a panel of jurors who hear evidence from a prosecutor and decide whether or not to charge someone with a crime. The prosecutor has no responsibility to present evidence that favors those being investigated."
>
> I don't necessarily want to disagree with your conclusion, but this
> doesn't jibe with my year-and-a-half experience as a NY federal grand
> juror in 2003-4, hearing white collar crime cases, largely Wall
> Street-related.
>
>> The grand jury can subpoena pretty much anyone they want and ask about anything, and people can be jailed for contempt if they do not answer questions. Grand jury witnesses have no right to have a lawyer in the room to object to how the prosecutor is conducting the proceedings.
>
> In my experience, lawyers were on occasion present, and witnesses
> exhibited varying degrees of cooperation, including not answering
> questions. Lawyers mostly accompanied witnesses who had already been
> convicted of crimes, rather than "free people off the street." Those
> convicted were there in order to provide information leading to
> further indictments of others, seemingly the only way white collar
> crime is investigated.
>
>> The jurors are hand-picked by prosecutors with no screen for bias.
>
> I was picked at random, along with everyone else in my grand jury
> room, so the prosecutor doesn't have any control over the composition
> of the jury. There isn't any examination of (and rejection of) jurors
> by a lawyer for the defense, though. The juries are impanelled for
> varying periods of time, and prosecutors bring cases to a specific
> jury based on their schedule, and to some extent, what kinds of cases
> the jury is hearing. At times, I also heard federal drug cases,
> largely because my jury happened to be available.
>
>> All evidence is presented by a prosecutor in a cloak of secrecy.
>
> There's no cross examination, but the prosecutor brings of evidence
> which the jury is free to examine. Witnesses are often led out of the
> jury room and the prosecutor asks for questions, which will then be
> asked of the witness upon their return, or a prosecutor will argue why
> they won't ask a specific question, or suggest another question they
> prefer to ask that might yield the same answers.
>
> The judgement of a grand jury is "reasonable suspicion" rather than
> "beyond doubt," so there is opportunity for prosecutor's to play this
> to their advantage, sometimes bending the rules pretty badly. (I can't
> say more.) The most important thing in the jury room, to my mind, is
> the interest and knowledge of the jurors, whom I found mostly confused
> by the financial and corporate stuff we were dealing with, but were on
> point when we got an occasional drug case. I'm sure there are other
> blind spots: I was on the jury during the Steve Kurtz case in Buffalo,
> and a lot of my fellow jurors really didn't understand what was going
> on there (but were certainly willing to have a conversation about it).
>
> Best, Charles
>
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