Websites for the Federal Courts
Federal courts – links to federal district courts
and to the federal circuit courts of appeals (the district courts are the
trial courts, the circuit courts are the intermediate appellate courts and
the Supreme Court is the ultimate appellate court),
http://www.uscourts.gov/allinks.html#all
Federal prosecutors – this site provides access to
every U.S. Attorney’s Office in the country. U.S. Attorneys are federal
prosecutors; one is appointed for every federal judicial district in every
state. The site gives you the information you need to contact a U.S.
Attorney’s Office.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/offices/index.html
Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and specifically Rule 6 of the Federal Rules
of Criminal Procedure, govern the conduct of grand jury proceedings in the federal
system. The links below will take you to Rule 6 and other relevant rules.
Rule 6
(This rule contains the basic provisions governing federal grand jury procedure) |
Rule 7
(This rule prescribes when an indictment must be used and when an information is
allowable, along with prescribing the requirement for waiving an indictment and defining
what must be included in an indictment) |
Rule 17
(This rule prescribes when a subpoena, including a grand jury subpoena, issues and tells
how a subpoena must be served) |
Rule 42
(This rule defines the procedure for sanctioning criminal contempt) |
Federal Guidelines for Child Witnesses
U.S. Department of Justice, Witness Guidelines – Article VI
(Guidelines for Child Victims and Child Witnesses)
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/infores/agg2000/html/a6.html
United States Code
Note: There are also federal statutes, which are collected
("codified") in the United States Code. The Code is organized into titles
and sections. Title 18 of the U.S. Code contains MOST of the Code's provisions on
criminal matters. Consequently, a specific statute govering grand jury proceedings
(or other criminal matters) will be cited like this: [Title 18] U.S. Code section
_______. The links below take you to some of the pertinent U.S. Code sections.
U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Grand Juries
The grand jury "can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is
being violated,
or even just because it wants assurance that it is not."
U.S.
v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U.S. 632, 642-643 (1950)
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided a number of cases on issues involving
grand jury practice. The links below take you to some of these cases.
U.S. v. R. Enterprises, Inc.,
498 U.S. 292 (1991)
(Court held that grand jury subpoenas are presumed to seek relevant information, so anyone
who is trying to avoid complying with a subpoena has to show that there is no way it could
seek any information relevant to the grand jury’s investigation. Since the nature and
scope of a grand jury’s investigation is secret, this is very difficult to do.) |
U.S. v. Williams, 504
U.S. 36 (1992)
(Court held: (1) that a court cannot force a prosecutor to present evidence to a grand
jury that shows the person they’re investigating may NOT have committed a crime; (2)
that courts have very little power to intervene in grand jury proceedings because grand
juries are not part of the court system but are in effect a fourth branch of government,
separate and apart from the judiciary, the executive branch, and the legislature.) |
Butterworth v. Smith,
494 U.S. 624 (1990)
(Court held that Florida’s permanently banning grand jury witnesses from talking
about what occurred when they appeared before a grand jury violated the First Amendment.) |
Bank of Nova Scotia v. U.S.,
487 U.S. 250 (1988)
(Court held that prosecutor misconduct before the grand jury is analyzed as "harmless
error," which means there is no remedy unless the misconduct caused the grand jurors
to indict when they would not otherwise have done so. The defendants in this case
ultimately went to trial and were acquitted, but their saga–from grand jury
investigation to acquittal–consumed seven years and approximately $1,000,000 in legal
fees.) |
U.S. v. Sells Engineering,
463 U.S. 418 (1983)
(Court held that grand jury information cannot be revealed to federal lawyers for use in
litigating a civil case without first obtaining a court’s approval.) |
Costello v. U.S., 350
U.S. 359 (1956)
(Court held that hearsay evidence can be used in grand jury proceedings, that the
limitations on using hearsay at trial do not apply to grand juries.) |
U.S. v. Mandujano, 425
U.S. 564 (1976)
(Court held that the Miranda rights–right to silence and to counsel–do
not apply in grand jury proceedings, and that a grand jury witness can only rely on the
Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The opinion explains how the two
differ.) |
U.S. v. Dionisio, 410 U.S.
1 (1973)
(Court held that a grand jury subpoena requiring someone to testify does not fall within
the provisions of the Fourth Amendment, and so cannot be challenged as inflicting an
unconstitutional search and seizure. It also held that the Fifth Amendment does not
protect a grand jury witness from having to give samples of his or her voice, or other
kinds of physical evidence.) |
U.S. v. Mara, 410 U.S. 19
(1973)
(Court held that the Fifth Amendment does not protect a person from having to give a grand
jury samples of their handwriting, because the amendment only applies to
"testimony" and handwriting is not testimony.) |
U.S. v. Calandra, 414
U.S. 338 (1974)
(Court held that a grand jury can consider evidence that was obtained unconstitutionally,
in an unlawful search and seizure, because the exclusionary rule does not apply to the
grand jury.) |
Fisher v. U.S., 425 U.S.
391 (1976)
(Court held that the contents of documents are not protected by the Fifth Amendment; this
means you cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination as
the reason for refusing to produce documents a grand jury has subpoenaed.) |
Indictments
Handbooks for Federal Grand Jurors
Links Concerning Historical Societies'
Effort to Gain Access to Grand Jury Transcripts that were More Than 50 Years
Old--Grand Jury Secrecy Still Applied
Miscellaneous
The links below take you to sites that have a variety of information about federal
grand juries.
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