A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will be issued. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing. In Ireland, they also functioned as local government authorities.
A grand jury is so named because it has a greater number of jurors than a trial jury (also known as a petit jury, from the French for small).
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or jury:
“Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)