From: Jasper
Date: 8/17/01
Time: 1:49:29 PM
Charlie,
I can't take credit for the comments I attached to my response to Jolana. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and I couldn't find the name of the person I needed to credit in time to submit my post. In fact, I didn't have time to compose my own response so I did a search for "bill of rights grand jury" and posted the first thing I saw that conveyed the message I wanted to convey.
When I was researching for The Invisible Warriors between '86 and '94, I did quite a bit of study on the history of the Constitution -- particularly the Bill of Rights. I was struck then by the fact that the Grand Jury was set up to protect the accused from unwarranted prosecution. The idea was create a body of citizen fact-finders whose only interest was in finding the truth (as opposed to advancing a political agenda or political career). When they had enough information to make a reasonable determination about the merits of conducting a trial, only then was the "adversarial" system of prosecution and defense supposed to begin. The Grand Jury insured a real presumption of innocence for the accused before the State got involved in a process that, in practice, presumed the defendant's guilt.
The Grand Jury was a great idea whose time has come again. --Jasper