grand jury

A grand jury is a panel of citizens convened to determine whether there is probable cause to formally charge someone with a crime. Unlike a trial jury, it does not decide guilt; it reviews evidence presented by prosecutors and, if it finds sufficient cause, returns an indictment, and the Fifth Amendment requires that federal felony prosecutions begin in this way. Grand jury proceedings are secret and are controlled by the prosecutor, which makes departures from proper procedure significant: in the DOJ’s 2025 prosecution of James Comey, a federal judge found that the prosecutor had not presented the final indictment to the grand jury and that one of three charges had been rejected, irregularities the court said undermined the proceeding’s integrity.