Opening the Grand Jury

[allodial]

That is a walk down memory lane. I have been chief justice on two grand juries. They have little effect.

I was jurist on the Wichita National Grand Jury too. That gathering was substantial but had no effect on Congress. Maybe it turned their heads a little in the right direction though.

Do you have access to the materials/papers related to forming those grand juries? One might reasonably expect that a grand jury formed by residents of the District of Columbia would have little effect outside of that venue. Grand jury formed in a corporate venue would be simply a copy of the master.

Apart from obviated jurisdictional issues, there might be some merit to the merger of law and equity as in there is a 'threshold' where the grand jury crosses into the attorney-marshaled grand-jury in a 'merged venue' and the the grand jury's purpose becomes merely to 'imitate law' or 'simulate law' for the sake of equity.

You propose educating a jury after selection?

To be effective the jury members would have to be knowledgeable ahead of time.

The selection process terminates that. They are registered voters or drivers.

Exactly.

I went into the law library before checking in with the commissioner and looked up the statutes. There was nothing about having to provide information so I left the questionnaire blank. The one in the jury box too. So they put me on the jury and I ran it away. That defense attorney knew what she was doing all right, keeping me on. I was foreman and we acquitted the guy.

Sounds like there was only one people on that jury.

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Of course you get this already but, I'm surprised how no matter how much the attempt is made to relate the truth that some folks just don't seem get the idea of the great magnitude of difference between, say, a Student Council and the County Board of Education--folks who seem quite cozy comfortable with the mirage of the Prom Queen (first lady) and her man (president of the student council) being their leaders but yet don't seem comfortable--fence straddling maybe(?). I've rather learned to ignore them to some extent when they complain about the problems they have in that cozy space after it becomes apparent they aren't interesting in the maturity and responsibility that goes with leaving it.