I love this site - irreverent, well-written, full of surprises, insightful, and updated constantly with the latest. (Don't miss today's hilarious Fitz Viagra Pen Story, which I've posted here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5193540)
I found this long blog entry by far the most helpful compendium (lots of great links) and exposition on Grand Jury arcana I have seen so far:
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/untying-few-legal-knots.htmlThursday, October 27, 2005
Untying a Few Legal Knots
The latest spate of news reports (or non-news reports, as the case may be) keep stirring up the same series of questions. Thought it might be helpful for a few legal knots to be undone, at least to the extent that I can do so with basic explanations. I previously addressed some issues on Grand Juries a while ago {
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005/10/inner-workings-of-grand-jury.html}, but some additional questions and facts have arisen that needed further explanation, so here goes.
Figured no one was really interested in a law review treatise on any of this, so I'm going to skip the arcane and just hit the essential bits. As with anything in the legal world, there are always all sorts of tangentially related matters, directly related exceptions and all sorts of other legal bits that may apply. This is, by no means, an exhaustive or comprehensive treatment of the subjects -- just a quick primer for the non-legal folks among us, or for the legal folks who never delve into criminal matters (it's a whole world unto its own, believe me).
Is this a Grand Jury or a Special Grand Jury? What is the difference?After everyone working for weeks under the assumption that this was a special grand jury, based on media reports, yesterday's article in the WaPo revived that question for me. Since there has been no sourcing in any of the articles thus far, I decided to take matters into my own hands and called the Federal District Court Clerk's Office for the DC Circuit this morning. Amazing how such a little thing as the telephone can prove so useful, isn't it?
As it turns out, this is a regular old Grand Jury. The Clerk with whom I spoke told me that "no special Grand Jury is seated at this point" in the DC Circuit. (Am trying to not read into tea leaves that perhaps one could be seated shortly, and just take that as a no special grand jury at present, thanks.)
(snip - much more plus an excellent collection of informative links)