Grand jury

A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a person to testify. A grand jury is separate from the courts, which do not preside over its functioning.^[1]

Originating in England during the Middle Ages,^[2] prominent modern examples include grand juries in the United States, and to a lesser extent, Liberia and Japan.^[3] Other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most others now employ a different procedure, referred to as a preliminary hearing or committal proceedings, that does not involve a jury.^{[citation needed]} Grand juries perform both accusatory and investigatory functions. The investigatory functions of grand juries include obtaining and reviewing documents and other evidence, and hearing sworn testimonies of witnesses who appear before it; the accusatory function determines whether there is probable cause to believe that one or more persons committed a particular offense within the jurisdiction of a court. While most grand juries focus on criminal matters, some civil grand juries serve an independent watchdog function. Around the 18th and 19th-century in Ireland and the U.S., grand juries were occasionally formed to pass or approve public policy.

The grand jury (from the French word grand meaning "large") is so named because traditionally it has more jurors than a trial jury, sometimes called a petty or petit jury (from the French word petit meaning "small").^[4] A grand jury in the United States is usually composed of 16 to 23 citizens, though in Virginia it has fewer members for regular or special grand juries.