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Jdayh
04-04-2009, 10:46 PM
The Federal Grand Jury is the 4th Branch of Government--- UNDERSTAND THIS!!!


The Federal Grand Jury is the 4th Branch of Government
by Leo C. Donofrio, J.D.
January 22, 2009

All of us may one day serve as grand jurors in federal court, and I hope this article will educate the reader to his/her true power as granted by the Constitution. For that power, despite having been hidden for many years behind the veil of a legislative fraud, still exists in all of its glory in the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. The US Supreme Court has confirmed and reinforced that power.

So please, copy this report and paste it far and wide. It is not spin. It is not false. It is not for sale, it is not copyrighted by me, so paste and quote it freely. This report is the truth and we need truth, now, more than ever.

The Constitutional power of “we the people” sitting as grand jurors has been subverted by a deceptive play on words since 1946 when the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were enacted. Regardless, the power I am going to explain to you still exists in the Constitution, and has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court despite the intention of the legislature and other legal scholars to make our power disappear with a cheap magic trick.

Repeat a lie with force and repetition and the lie becomes known as truth. In the case of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, the power of the grand jury, to return “presentments” on its own proactive initiation, without reliance upon a US Attorney to concur in such criminal charges, has been usurped by an insidious play on words.

Most of this article is going to quote other scholars, judges and legislators as I piece together a brief but thorough history of the federal grand jury for your review. But the punch line is my personal contribution to the cause:

UNITED STATES CITIZENS SITTING AS FEDERAL GRAND JURORS ARE THE FOURTH BRANCH OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

My input into this vital fight is no more than the analysis of a few carefully used words. It only took a small sleight of pen back in 1946 to hide our power, and it won’t take more than a few words to take that power back. But a proper overview is necessary for most of you who are unfamiliar with the issue at hand. So let me provide you with some history and then we’ll see what went wrong and how to correct it.

HISTORY OF FEDERAL GRAND JURY POWER

I want to draw your attention to a law review article, CREIGHTON LAW REVIEW, Vol. 33, No. 4 1999-2000, 821, IF IT’S NOT A RUNAWAY, IT’S NOT A REAL GRAND JURY by Roger Roots, J.D.

“In addition to its traditional role of screening criminal cases for prosecution, common law grand juries had the power to exclude prosecutors from their presence at any time and to investigate public officials without governmental influence. These fundamental powers allowed grand juries to serve a vital function of oversight upon the government. The function of a grand jury to ferret out government corruption was the primary purpose of the grand jury system in ages past.”

The 5th Amendment:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.”

An article appearing in American Juror, the newsletter of the American Jury Institute and the Fully Informed Jury Association, citing the famed American jurist, Joseph Story, explained :

“An indictment is a written accusation of an offence preferred to, and presented, upon oath, as true, by a grand jury, at the suit of the government. An indictment is framed by the officers of the government, and laid before the grand jury. Presentments, on the other hand, are the result of a jury’s independent action:

‘A presentment, properly speaking, is an accusation, made by a grand jury of its own mere motion, of an offence upon its own observation and knowledge, or upon evidence before it, and without any bill of indictment laid before it at the suit of the government. Upon a presentment, the proper officer of the court must frame an indictment, before the party accused can be put to answer it.’

Back to the Creighton Law Review:

“A ‘runaway’ grand jury, loosely defined as a grand jury which resists the accusatory choices of a government prosecutor, has been virtually eliminated by modern criminal procedure. Today’s “runaway” grand jury is in fact the common law grand jury of the past. Prior to the emergence of governmental prosecution as the standard model of American criminal justice, all grand juries were in fact “runaways,” according to the definition of modern times; they operated as completely independent, self-directing bodies of inquisitors, with power to pursue unlawful conduct to its very source, including the government itself.”

So, it’s clear that the Constitution intended to give the grand jury power to instigate criminal charges, and this was especially true when it came to government oversight. But something strange happened on the way to the present. That power was eroded by a lie enacted by the legislative branch. The 5th Amendment to the Constitution still contains the same words quoted above, but if you sit on a grand jury and return a “presentment” today, the prosecutor must sign it or it probably won’t be allowed to stand by the judge and the criminal charges you have brought to the court’s attention will be swept away. And the reason for this can be found in a legislative lie of epic proportions.

for rest of article click here
http://www.cusc.org/editorial/3563.htm