{"id":36330,"date":"2016-04-21T07:36:11","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T11:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=36330"},"modified":"2016-04-21T07:42:52","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T11:42:52","slug":"the-grand-jury-belongs-to-the-people-antonin-scalia-1992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=36330","title":{"rendered":"The Grand Jury Belongs to The People \u2014 Antonin Scalia (1992)"},"content":{"rendered":"

United States v. Williams, 112 S.Ct. 1735, 504 U.S. 36, 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992)
\nhttp:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/504\/36<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

NEW YORK IS \u201cGROUND ZERO\u201d \u2013 Major grassroots movement in 48 States, Constituting Common Law Grand Juries.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0stunning six to three, 1992 Decision that went unnoticed, until now,\u00a0Justice Antonin Scalia\u00a0writing for the majority said:\u00a0In the Supreme Court case of United States v. Williams, 112 S.Ct. 1735, 504 U.S. 36, 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992),\u00a0Justice\u00a0Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, confirmed that the American grand jury is neither part of the judicial, executive\u00a0nor legislative branches of government, but instead belongs to the people. It is in effect a fourth branch of government\u00a0\u201cgoverned\u201d and administered to directly by and on behalf of the American people, and its authority emanates from the\u00a0Bill of Rights, the acts of the Grand Jury is the consent of the people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grand jury is mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but not in the body of the Constitution.\u00a0It has not been textually\u00a0assigned, therefore, to any of the branches described in the first three Articles. It \u201d \u2018is a constitutional fixture in its own\u00a0right. In fact the whole theory of its function is that it belongs to no branch of the institutional government, serving as a\u00a0kind of buffer or referee between the Government and the people\u201d.
\n\u2014 Justice Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/h6>\n

\u201cThus, citizens have the unbridled right to empanel their own grand juries and present \u201cTrue Bills\u201d of indictment to a\u00a0court, which is then required to commence a criminal proceeding. Our Founding Fathers presciently thereby created a\u00a0\u201cbuffer\u201d the people may rely upon for justice, when public officials, including judges, criminally violate the law.\u201d
\n\u2014\u00a0Justice Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/h6>\n

\u201cThe grand jury is an institution separate from the courts, over whose functioning the courts do not preside, we think it\u00a0clear that, as a general matter at least, no such \u201csupervisory\u201d judicial authority exists. The \u201ccommon law\u201d of the Fifth
\nAmendment demands a traditional functioning grand jury.\u201d
\n\u2014 Justice Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/h6>\n

\u201cAlthough the grand jury normally operates, of course, in the courthouse and under judicial auspices, its institutional\u00a0relationship with the judicial branch has traditionally been, so to speak, at arm\u2019s length. Judges\u2019 direct involvement in\u00a0the functioning of the grand jury has generally been confined to the constitutive one of calling the grand jurors together\u00a0and administering their oaths of office. The grand jury\u2019s functional independence from the judicial branch is evident\u00a0both in the scope of its power to investigate criminal wrongdoing, and in the manner in which that power is exercised.\u201d
\n\u2014 Justice Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/h6>\n

\u201cThe grand jury \u2018can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even because it wants assurance\u00a0that it is not.\u2019 It need not identify the offender it suspects, or even \u201cthe precise nature of the offense\u201d it is investigating. \u00a0The grand jury requires no authorization from its constituting court to initiate an investigation, nor does the prosecutor\u00a0require leave of court to seek a grand jury indictment. And in its day-to-day functioning, the grand jury generally\u00a0operates without the interference of a presiding judge. It swears in its own witnesses and deliberates in total secrecy.\u201d
\n\u2014<\/em> Justice Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/h6>\n

\u201cRecognizing this tradition of independence, we have said the 5th Amendment\u2019s constitutional guarantee presupposes\u00a0an investigative body \u2018acting independently of either prosecuting attorney or judge\u201d \u2014 Justice Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/h6>\n

\u201cGiven the grand jury\u2019s operational separateness from its constituting court, it should come as no surprise that we have\u00a0been reluctant to invoke the judicial supervisory power as a basis for prescribing modes of grand jury procedure. Over\u00a0the years, we have received many requests to exercise supervision over the grand jury\u2019s evidence-taking process, but we\u00a0have refused them all. \u201cit would run counter to the whole history of the grand jury institution\u201d to permit an indictment\u00a0to be challenged \u201con the ground that there was incompetent or inadequate evidence before the grand jury.\u201d
\n\u2014 Justice\u00a0Antonin Scalia<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/911justicecampaign.org\/the-grand-jury-belongs-to-the-people-antonin-scalia-1992\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United States v. Williams, 112 S.Ct. 1735, 504 U.S. 36, 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992) http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/504\/36<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}