Grand Juries in Savage Times -- Benjamin Wittes - Lawfare

[erronis]

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation--grand-juries-in-savage-times

They really are an important civil liberties protection.

Plaque 7 of Constitution Corner at West Point. Photographed by Bill Coughlin, June 15, 2012. (https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=59186).

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that a federal grand jury in Washington had declined an indictment against six members of Congress who had released a video to remind active duty military personnel that they did not have to follow unlawful orders. "It was remarkable," The Times reported,

that the U.S. attorney's office in Washington--led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump's--authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation's spy agencies.

But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump's bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.

Remarkable in the sense of being worthy of remark? Yes, absolutely.

Remarkable in the sense of being surprising? Surely not.

. . .

When the government engages in monstrosities, we see, in response, that layers of the democratic substrata that normally lie invisible suddenly become visible. The grand jury seems like a formality to many people in normal times. Grand juries never reject cases, after all. They are instruments of the prosecution, we all learn cynically, that offer no real civil liberties protection. Queue inevitable ham sandwich line.

. . .