I found this as a comment on the GW channel regarding citizens right to form a Grand Jury. Thought it may be useful here, it's very interesting and may be of help to us.
TLDR: The government has devoted years to making the grand jury impotent. We should restore the citizen's grand jury as a body of the people, entirely outside of government, as intended.
The US Citizen's Grand Jury
The Citizens must take back their control of the Grand Jury. The limitations placed upon the grand jury by the DOJ are unconstitutional, therefore, are to be disregarded.
While I do not know that George (Webb) can present to the present Federal grand jury with its present prosecutor, forming another jury is our right to do, in complete opposition to the current Justice Dept. rules. *see below:
From the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1789, up until and to some extent beyond its codification in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a Federal grand jury practice went for the most part unregulated by statute.[82]
This was due to the limited constitutional jurisdiction of the federal government, and to the scarcity of federal statutes governing criminal justice, a domain traditionally reserved to the states.[83]
In its traditional form, the citizen grand jury had come to be seen as an inefficient, unnecessary and possibly dangerous phenomenon.[84]
Ultimately, a combination of judicial activism, executive contempt and legislative apathy left the federal grand jury weakened and contained before it had a chance to truly roam free.[85]
1946 ENACTMENT OF THE FEDERAL RULES
In 1946, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were adopted, codifying what had previously been a vastly divergent set of common law procedural rules and regional customs.[86]
In general, an effort was made to conform the rules to the contemporary state of federal criminal practice.[87]
In the area of federal grand jury practice, however, a remarkable exception was allowed. The drafters of Rules 6 and 7, which loosely govern federal grand juries, denied future generations of what had been the well-recognized powers of common law grand juries: powers of unrestrained investigation and of independent declaration of findings.
The committee that drafted the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provided no outlet for any document other than a prosecutor-signed indictment. In so doing, the drafters at least tacitly, if not affirmatively, opted to ignore explicit constitutional language.[88]
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE passim (1996) (stating that the U.S. Justice Department now operates with few structural limitations and has become increasingly unaccountable). 19.
Properly speaking, the Fifth Amendment right to indictment applies only to the federal government. The right to indictment by grand jury is one of the only provisions of the Bill of Rights that has not been incorporated to the States by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court first rejected incorporation of the right in Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 538 (1884) and has reaffirmed its holding in subsequent decisions. 20.
In 1906 the United States Supreme Court dealt with the question of whether grand juries could be restricted from straying into investigations of issues not formally presented to them by prosecutors. See Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43 (1916). The Court held that it was "entirely clear . . . under the practice in this country," that grand jurors may proceed upon either their own knowledge or upon the examination of witnesses brought before them, "to inquire for themselves whether a crime cognizable in the court has been committed." Hale, 201 U.S. at 65.
Thus, in some respects, the "runaway" grand jury, though not given such a name at the time, has been upheld by the nation's highest court. It is therefore debatable whether the modern Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which have limited federal grand jury action since 1946, are constitutional. See infra notes 87-128 and accompanying text (discussing the constitutionality of Rules 6);
See also FRANKEL & NAFTALIS, supra note 12, at 111 (mentioning that Rule 6's language "sounds like an inescapable and unambiguous barrier to the grand jury's proceeding without an attorney. . . . [b]ut people learned in the law have seen means of escaping and possibly overriding barriers that appear insurmountable at first. While the barriers here still stand, the debate may not be over.").99.
It must be noted that the capture of the grand jury's presentment power has never faced direct Supreme Court review as to its constitutionality.
The words of United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, when dissenting from the decision to enact the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, are particularly relevant: Whether by this transmittal the individual members of the Court who voted to transmit the rules intended to express approval of the varied policy decisions the rules embody I am not sure.
I am reasonably certain, however, that the Court's transmittal does not carry with it a decision that the amended rules are all constitutional. (http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/runaway.htm))
Note: In a sense, this will be breaking new legal ground, as the government has devoted years to making the grand jury impotent. We should restore the citizen's grand jury as a body of the people, entirely outside of government, as intended.
For that reason, I see no reason to even consult with the government, but rather to go about the business of carefully constituting a jury for the business at hand, and eventually provide a presentment of their findings, and let the public decide who is most just, which system is fair, who represents their interests.
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UgTr2 ago
A grand jury has defects that are not present in a common jury. Both are sworn, but the citizens of a grand jury are dependent upon the state and so cannot hear a case involving the state without prejudice. A common jury (i.e. a jury at common law) is made up of freemen and has no such defect.
LAWFUL MAN. A freeman, unattainted, and capable of bearing oath; a legalis homo. (Blacks 1st edition)
alphabravo ago
Thanks for this. So a case involving the state cannot be held by grand jury for these reasons, rather a common jury / jury at common law should be held. Is this correct?
UgTr2 ago
Yes. The grand jury developed in the United States, which has a civil political model (the Senate). Common law and civil law has always been at odds regarding the ethics and mechanisms of protection, for example the redefinition of the law of the land (of the U.S.) to exclude oaths as the singular means of evaluating truth. The common law has a theistic basis, but the separation of church and state in th U.S. led to implied atheism in that making oath was no longer regarded as significant; affirmations were deemed to be equally effective. "We the people" were historically responsible for the creation of the federation of states and remain the authoritative party for effecting remedies relating to that federation.