Word: grand
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Allow a witness to bring his attorney into the grand jury room...
Every so often, like an air bubble from a sunken ship, a new bit of law reform arises out of the hulk of the Nixon Administration. A U.S. House judiciary subcommittee is currently taking expert testimony on the venerable and awesome grand jury system, which Nixon's Justice Department had used to intimidate its New Left opponents, and many legal authorities are calling for change. Another alteration in the 800-year evolution of the grand jury, which once served to protect the innocent from over-zealous prosecutors, appears imminent...
From 1970 to 1973, agents of the Justice Department's Internal Security Division (since abolished) convened an estimated 100 grand juries in 80 cities in pursuit of assorted radicals, including associates of Daniel Ellsberg, Phillip Berrigan and Abbie Hoffman. Actual convictions were rare-but jail terms for contempt of the grand jury (refusal to answer questions) were not. Complaints about federal grand jury abuse have not been confined to the left, however. Last week General Motors Corp. Attorney George Moscarino accused IRS agents of abusing the system by summoning GM employees before a Detroit grand jury on what...
...book published last week, The Grand Jury: An Institution on Trial, U.S. Judge Marvin Frankel and Attorney Gary Naftalis conclude: "The Grand Jury has served too often to harass the unorthodox and the unpopular." Several reforms suggested by Frankel and Naftalis appear in a bill submitted by U.S. Representative Joshua Eilberg. The proposed law would...
Attorney General Griffin Bell is opposed to the section permitting a witness to bring a lawyer, arguing that this "would mean two trials instead of one," but he is on record as favoring grand jury reform in principle. So are the American Bar Association and American Law Institute. Indeed, some trial lawyers have called for the abolition of grand juries as outmoded and superfluous. That would involve repealing the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of a grand jury's consideration before indictment, however, and no one has dared to tamper with the Bill of Rights in nearly 200 years...