Re: PRZ grand jury - how about free accts for them...

[Brian Davis <bdavis@thepoint.net>]

On Fri, 12 Jan 1996, Michael Froomkin wrote:

> sounds like jury tampering to me.  a good way to go to jail quickly.

Probably not, especially once the grand jury's term has expired.  What 
the non-lawyers must realize, however, is that (in most cases) relatively 
little of a "grand jury investigation" is conducted before the grand 
jury.  It varies from case to case, and prosecutor to prosecutor, but 
gathering records using grand jury subpoenas (and reporting to the GJ 
that the records have been obtained), interviewing witnesses outside the 
GJ (and eventually summarizing the information when presenting a proposed 
indictment for consideration), is much more common.

There are various reasons for this:  minimize the inconvenience to the 
members of the grand jury (if they had to hear every witness, productive 
or otherwise ...), limited available grand jury time, unnecessary 
creation of Jencks Act material (testimony of trial witnesses which must 
be turned over to the defense), and simple lack of time.  Know that 
agents cannot be present in the GJ except when they are testifying (and 
only one witness is allowed at a time).

I, for example, have about 40 investigations going on for which I bear at 
least some responsibility.  Most are conducted by the agents until they 
present the case to me for a final decision on whether to present a 
proposed indictment.

Certain cases, of course, I am more involved in, and I would guess that 
the Mitnick investigation was one.  But being more involved almost 
certainly doesn't mean bringing *every* witness to testify before the 
GJ.  So even if a grand juror told you everything that went on in a 
particular case, you would not know everything the 
investigators/prosecutors know.

EBD