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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

Before being imprisoned and released, Plante said that a Freedom of Information Act request she filed revealed that the grand jury was first convened in March, two months before the vandalism she is being questioned about even occurred.

How does a grand jury meet in March to investigate riots happening in May?

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Grand juries are typically impanelled for calendar periods, and consider whatever (alleged) crimes take place during that time. They can be specially impanelled for unusual or extraordinary crimes (eg following an act of terrorism such as the OK bombing), but federal rules of civil procedure require every district court to impanel a GJ at least 18 months, which acts as a (light) check on federal prosecutors.

I don't understand how this answers the question...

... or do you mean that they were investigating an alleged conspiracy to vandalize state property?

Because the grand jury was likely not impanelled to consider a specific set of crimes; it's just the one that happened to be in session at the time these people came before it. That it was convened in March is probably completely irrelevant.

The grand jury was convened in march to rule on any crimes that might occur in the following months.

Do you have a good link which explains how the grand jury operates? It's a foreign concept to me that the grand jury deals with precrime, and I'm suddenly uncomfortable with knowing so little about my country's justice system.

I don't have any good links, but in the US a grand jury does not deal with precrime.

Juries are selected for a particular case. Grand juries are selected for a particular time period. During that time period potential cases will be brought before the grand jury who will then decide whether or not the case will go to trial (and if it does, a separate jury is selected for that case).

I may be off on some details, but that is my understanding of how grand juries work.

Grand juries sit for months at a time, and a prosecutor has to bring cases before the grand jury before going to court. The grand jury decides if there is sufficient evidence for the case to go to trial. It's largely a formality. Essentially, the grand jury is there to answer the question of 'if these alleged facts are true, would that mean a crime has taken place?' Technically, the GJ's job is to find whether there is probable cause to issue an indictment and put someone on trial.

That's why you don't have a regular defense team there; the GJ isn't pronouncing on the guilt or innocence of the accused person, they're pronouncing on the gravity of the alleged offense. So if you're a prosecutor and you bring someone in front of a grand jury for murder, all you have to establish on a practical level is that a murder took place. You can learn more from the handbook for jurors: http://www.uscourts.gov/Viewer.aspx?doc=/uscourts/FederalCou...

There's no precrime involved here. A crime (vandalism of a federal court building) occurred in May, and it was brought before the grand jury that happened to be impanelled at that time, as one of the many cases they examine. It's not a conspiracy just because you don't know about it.

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