If a grand jury fails to indict, can the prosecutor try again to get the person indicted?

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Note: The comments and questions on this page came from people who visited this website. Please feel free to send your comments and questions to Professor Brenner (brenner@udayton.edu). She will respond privately, and may ask permission to post your message on this page. No one's e-mail will be used without first obtaining their permission, and names and e-mail addresses are removed before a comment is posted. Starting in 2002, the responses posted to the site indicate which of us replied: The initials SWB mean Professor Brenner wrote the response; the initials LES mean Professor Shaw wrote the response. We are also putting the year down, to indicate when the response was posted. If no initials appear, Professor Brenner wrote the response.

If a grand jury fails to indict, can the prosecutor try again to get the person indicted? Is a grand jury a trial?

You have a great site, concerning Grand Juries.

Question 1: When a State Grand Jury fails to indict can they be re-indicted on the same charges at a later date?

Question 2: Is the Grand Jury a trial, or a filtering function of the courts?

Response: Thank you.

Question 1: If a grand jury fails to indict, another grand jury can be asked to decide whether it will indict. Since an indictment is not a charge, there is no double jeopardy issue barring reconsideration by a second grand jury . . . the only thing that would effectively prevent that would be if the statute of limitations on the offenses at issue had run in the interim.

Question 2: Not a trial, not at all. More like a filtering function . . . actually, more like a prosecutor deciding whether someone should be charged with a crime, at least in terms of deciding whether to indict. With regard to a grand jury's investigating matters, that is more like what the police do.

SWB

2002

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