From Indictment to Information--Implications of the Shift
![handle is hein.journals/ylr42 and id is 175 raw text is: YALE LAW JOURNAL
VOL. XLII DECEMBER, 1932 No. 2
FROM INDICTMENT TO INFORMATION-
]IMPLICATIONS OF THE SHIFT
GEORGE H. DESSIONt
RECALLING Bentham's assertion that the grand jury had been per-
forming no useful function since the beginning of modem prosecu-
tion, and remarking the unanimity of modern expert studies to the
same effect, the Report on Prosecution by the National Commission
on Law Observance and Enforcement concludes:
that under modern conditions the grand jury is seldom better than a
rubber stamp of the prosecuting attorney and has ceased to perform or
be needed for the function for which it was established and for which it
was retained throughout the centuries; that . ... an unnecessary work
burden upon the administration of justice . . should be lightened by
eliminating the necessity of indictment and permitting prosecution to be
instituted and accusation to be made through the simpler processes of
information. 1
Twenty-four of the states had already-in some instances long before
-abolished the traditional requirement of indictment in felony prose-
cutions. The draftsmen of the American Law Institute's Code of
Criminal Procedure had recently embodied in it a recommendation
that the remaining jurisdictions follow suit.2
But the grand jury was still not altogether without friends.
Charges that the use of indictment dissipated responsibility by
cloaking prosecutors who ought to come out in the open were coun-
tered by suggestions from many that, as put by Charles H. Tuttle,
then United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York:
The prosecutor who is conscious of his heavy responsibility will
be glad to have it shared by a body representative of the com-
tAssistant Professor of Law, Yale University: See the author's article, v.ith
Isadore H. Cohen, The Inquisitorial F2ctions of Grand Jurics (1932) 41 YALE
L. J. 687.
1. (1931) 124.
2. CODE OF CRIINAL PROCEDURE, PROPOSED FiNAL DiL%'T (Am. L. Inst.
1930) Introductory Note to c. 4.
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From Indictment to Information--Implications of the Shift
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