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15 Fed. Juror 1 (1944)

handle is hein.journals/fjbfgj15 and id is 1 raw text is: February, 1944 ub cation of the Federal Grd ury Assoc aofor t Suter District of Nw York Vol. XV, No. I Whittling Away Our Basic Rights There are two bills pending in Congress which would permit defendants to waive prosecution by indictment.* It is claimed that in certain districts where Federal Grand Juries meet infrequently, the business of the Court can be expedited and much expense avoided by allowing persons accused of crime to consent that they be prosecuted under an information to be filed by an United States Attorney instead of by the indictment of a Grand Jury. We are strongly opposed to these bills because when they are recognized in their true significance and light, they constitute a part of the process of whittling away the rights of the citizen. It may be inconvenient and at times expensive to bring persons to the Bar of Justice to answer for their alleged crimes by means of the traditional ma- chinery of indictment by a Grand Jury, but convenience and expense should not even enter into consideration of so important a matter. Indictment by Grand Jury is an indis- pensable part of the American System of Justice, designed for the protection of the rights of the people by guarding the rights of the individual. A change of this nature constitutes a flank attack upon the whole system. Because we are a government of laws and not of men, we do not wish to delegate more and more power to fewer and fewer individuals. In the State of New York and in many other states men are not permitted to plead guilty to a charge of murder in the first degree. Similarly, in this and many other states men cannot be convicted of crime solely on their own alleged confessions. It is to protect innocent men against becoming the victims of ignorance or fear, that men who are guilty by their own admissions, guilty of murder and other crimes, must be tried according to law in open Court regardless of their own alleged wishes and waivers. This costly procedure is pursued on the premise that the lowliest man stands before the law presumed to be innocent and must only be adjudged guilty according to law. It is easy to see that an ignorant man or a fearful man might consent to waive an indictment, should some prosecutor threaten him with dire consequences if he compels the Grand Jury and the Government to undergo the trouble and expense of following the traditional course of procuring an indictment. And so we believe that these bills contain the elements of a whittling-away process on the funda- mental rights of the citizen and we are therefore strongly opposed to their adoption. Should it be established that it is absolutely essential to permit this inroad on our basic system, we believe that the proposed bills should be amended to provide that where a defendant is arraigned by information instead of indictment, a complete report on each such case together with the reasons for proceeding by information instead of indictment must be presented to the next Grand Jury which should hear and be permitted to cross-examine either the complaining witness, the defendant or the particular prose- cutor who chose to proceed by imformation instead of indictment. THE FEDERAL JUROR 0 Senator McCarr= introduced one on January 7, 1943 (S 28); Representative Summers introduced a similar bill on January 14, 1943 (HR 1207).e

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