Grand Juries 101

How Grand Juries Reach A Decision:
Image courtesy of Marty Bucella, http://www.martybucella.com/

The long anticipated and presumably impending indictment of a certain hush money paying porn star humper got me to thinking about America’s grand jury system.

Now, for those of you who don’t know how it works (I know that’s no one on facebook and twitter), grand jury deliberations are a secret process whereby a group of ordinary citizens who’ve been summoned by the court to hear a case from the district attorney must decide whether or not there is enough evidence to bring charges against a suspect.

Here’s the step-by-step process of how grand juries decide cases:

Note: Step 8 explains why grand jury decisions are seldom, if ever, overturned.

Step 1: Before presenting the evidence, the district attorney (also known as the pitchman for the state’s industrial prison complex) provides background information on the suspect, the alleged crime(s) committed by the suspect, the statutes defining said crimes, and gives the jury an idea of the verdict they’ve been summoned to deliver.

Step 2: The prosecutor then presents the evidence in the form of documents, video recordings, eyewitness and friends-of-eyewitness testimony, powerpoint presentations and Rasmussen polls from the court of public opinion, etc., to the jury, who then decide which verdict will cause most people to completely lose any remaining shred of faith they may have left in America’s judicial system.

Step 3: Before deliberations begin, the ice is broken by requiring jurors to share at least one law they’ve broken (capital offenses notwithstanding) or would like to break (capital offenses allowed).

Step 4: If jurors have any questions or concerns, they write them down and discuss them later in an exclusive interview with a network news anchor or talk show host.

Step 5: The jury continues to deliberate until all members have paired up romantically with another juror.

Step 6: If the jury is hung after continued deliberations, the decision defaults to the longest-running institutionalized prejudice.

Step 7: Once a decision is reached, jurors are encouraged to sign the sequestration guest book located in their motel room.

Step 8: The jury’s decision may be overturned if the court finds jurors were improperly influenced by their consciences or even a cursory understanding of the law. (Refer to the above note.)

And there you have it. Feel free to use this guide as an an aid if you’re ever called to serve on your state’s grand jury.

But don’t tell the DA. It’ll be our little secret. K? 😉

#JTOL