Can a Person Be Tried Again Even if Grand Jury No Bill
This is an updated version of a story that ran on MPRnews.org in September 2016.
Convening a k jury is one style a prosecutor can decide whether to bring charges confronting someone who is suspected of committing a crime.
But grand juries have get a flashpoint in conversations over race, policing and criminal justice. Critics say that because grand juries well-nigh never indict police officers and lack transparency, they shouldn't exist used in cases of police shootings.
Here's a look at how grand juries work, why they exist and what makes them so controversial.
What is a yard jury?
A grand jury exists to put prove of a suspected criminal offense to a group of peers, which evaluates whether there'due south enough reasonable testify to indict — bring charges against — a person.
If the grand jury decides there'south likely crusade, it recommends charges. If not, jurors deliver what is called a no-bill, meaning they institute insufficient evidence to indict.
How is a k jury created?
County attorney's offices draw grand juries twice a year, and they only serve as needed. Each k jury convened in Minnesota can include upward to 23 people — but it takes simply xvi of those jurors to form a quorum, the minimum number required to brand a k jury meeting valid. Twelve jurors finding probable cause are required for a grand jury to issue an indictment.
Who's eligible to serve on a 1000 jury?
Jurors are selected randomly from what the state calls "a fair cross-section" of qualified residents in a item county.
Sure people may be exempted from serving on a grand jury, including those who take been convicted of a felony and are even so on parole; those with sure disabilities; and those who can't speak English. St. Louis County, Minnesota's largest geographically, forms chiliad juries a bit differently than the state's other counties, picking one grand jury from each of its three districts.
What happens during grand jury proceedings?
Grand jury proceedings are fairly uncomplicated in concept. A prosecutor presents prove to the jurors, and witnesses testify — ane at a time. Witnesses answer questions from the prosecutor and the jurors, just don't accept an attorney of their ain present. It's highly uncommon for the accused to testify on their own behalf.
In g jury proceedings, the prosecutor runs the prove. No defense attorneys are allowed: Only the prosecutor, jurors, the witness and a stenographer are permitted in the room.
What happens subsequently a grand jury investigates?
One time its investigation is consummate, a grand jury will recommend either an indictment or a "no nib," which happens when jurors say there shouldn't be charges.
Chiliad juries are intentionally secretive: Transcripts of testimony aren't public, and jurors can't talk about what happened. The secrecy is meant to encourage reticent witnesses to speak up — and to encourage jurors to exist impartial.
Any charges filed against the accused for which a grand jury doesn't event an indictment are dismissed. Merely lack of an indictment doesn't cease the case from going to a grand jury again, if a approximate orders it. And if there'due south no indictment, ceremonious activity is still possible.
What cases are sent to a grand jury?
In Minnesota, charges that bear the land's harshest sentence — life imprisonment; there'due south no death penalty in the state — always get to a grand jury. Included among those charges are beginning-caste murder and certain sex offenses. For other suspected crimes, it is upwardly to a prosecutor's discretion whether to convene a yard jury.
The question of how — and whether — to prosecute police enforcement officers who take a life has made its way to the forefront of discussion in the wake of police killings.
In the example of the officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a grand jury returned a "no-pecker" decision. Activists were upset, and cries confronting the employ of grand juries have persisted. In 2016, when he declined to bring charges against two Minneapolis officers in the shooting death of Jamar Clark, Hennepin Canton Attorney Mike Freeman said his office would no longer send police-involved shooting cases to grand juries, something Hennepin County prosecutors have washed for decades.
Merely it'south important to go along in heed that at that place's no legal imperative to bring a fatal police shooting case to a grand jury — it's a prosecutor's selection, and there are lots of reasons a prosecutor might decide to do so.
A prosecutor might toss a example to a chiliad jury, for case, for political encompass, said Brad Colbert, a professor at the Mitchell Hamline Schoolhouse of Constabulary. "And then the prosecutor doesn't accept to a say 'I charged it or I didn't charge it,' merely rather sent a example to a jury of peers." A prosecutor might also choose to phone call a one thousand jury because he or she sees it as a way to democratize the justice system.
Where practice 1000 juries come up from?
The concept of m juries arrived in America with its British colonists. Information technology'south an sometime thought. Twelve men — but knights or "other freemen" — made up the first grand jury, which was convened in England in 1215, according to a U.S. courts handbook. The idea was to give people outside the justice organisation some independence from judges, prosecutors and other legal types.
Of course, grand juries inverse significantly during the side by side few centuries. They became more secretive, too.
Only a scattering of countries exterior the United States however employ grand juries.
Even England, which inspired the U.Southward. grand jury organisation, has abandoned the process because it didn't work there anymore. Chiliad juries became "perfunctory" and serving on them was "a burden to reluctant actors," legal writer Albert Lieck wrote in 1934, a year after grand juries were abolished in England.
Yet, in the U.S., the process retains its autonomous roots — at least, in theory.
"The grand jury procedure was essentially designed with very lofty intentions of bringing the public and peers into the procedure of deciding when we're going to levy criminal sanctions confronting an individual," said JaneAnne Murray, a University of Minnesota law professor.
Only in modern America, Murray said, grand juries have go an "easy tool" for prosecutors to become the outcome they want, which often means: Charges.
Prosecutors can lay out any narrative they want in front end of a grand jury, as long as they use evidence that would be admissible in trial court. They almost always terminate with an indictment. Sol Wachtler, a one-time chief estimate for the New York Court of Appeals in one case said that a 1000 jury would even "indict a ham sandwich," it was so easy for prosecutors to get charges.
FiveThirtyEight has reported that grand juries at any level almost always indict.
Why are grand juries so controversial?
Distaste for k juries in the Twin Cities has a history dating back at least to 1990, when a Minneapolis police officer shot and killed 17-yr-erstwhile Tycel Nelson, who was blackness. An all-white grand jury didn't charge the officer. After that, Hennepin County convened a task force that establish racial minorities were overrepresented equally suspects, but underrepresented as k jurors.
Despite the prevalence of indictments in well-nigh cases brought to a yard jury, police officers are rarely subject to grand jury indictments.
One reason: The legal bar for charging officers in a person's expiry is much higher than it is for civilians.
Minnesota law says use of mortiferous forcefulness by law is justified "to protect the peace officer or another from credible death or swell bodily harm." In deadly strength laws for civilians, the law is much shorter and doesn't include the word "apparent."
The depression rate of indictment for officers also partly comes from the relationship between prosecutors and police departments: Sometimes prosecutors treat police departments like they're their own clients, Murray said.
In most cases, it'due south officers who do the investigative work for prosecutors. When a potential criminal example arises, it's commonly the police section — local, regional, canton, etc. — that gathers evidence, interviews witnesses and investigates the crime. Investigators then hand over their findings to prosecutors, who decide whether or not to press charges. And so, turning around and charging an officer can be a tough spot for prosecutors.
"At that place's an inherent conflict of involvement in that," Murray said, "and that's why people want to encounter a more transparent process rather than a secret g jury process."
What are the alternatives?
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman speaks during a news briefing in March 2016, when he announced that afterward months of careful consideration, he's decided he would not rely on a thou jury to determine whether ii Minneapolis police officers should be charged in the shooting death of Jamar Clark.
Elizabeth Flores | Star Tribune via AP
The use of g juries in cases of police violence have become so contentious that some places are taking other routes.
California banned the use of grand juries in cases of excessive or deadly strength past law enforcement in 2015. Backers of the legislation said outlawing grand juries in those instances would brand the judicial system more transparent and accountable.
In March 2016, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman fabricated a similar decision when because charges against the constabulary officers in the November 2015 shooting death of Jamar Clark. Ending a decades-old practice, Freeman said the county would stop handing off police force-involved shooting cases to g juries.
"The accountability and transparency limitations of a yard jury are as well high a hurdle to overcome," Freeman said at the fourth dimension, opting to make decisions about charges in his own role. In the Clark case, he declined to pursue charges.
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Source: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/01/24/grand-jury-explain
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