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A little primer for folks on the federal criminal justice process:
If an officer has probable cause to arrest someone on sight, they have a limited window where that person can be detained before charges are filed. Those charges are usually filed on the basis of one or more arresting officers’ complaints.
If a person is not arrested on the spot, but identified later or released without arrest, a law enforcement can still file a complaint with a magistrate judge and obtain an arrest warrant.
In both cases, the next step is that the defendant is arraigned, meaning they are brought before a judge and their charges are formally read. However, this is not enough to bring them to trial. For that, they must be indicted.
Grand jury indictments can be obtained based on a complaint or based on the outcome of a federal investigation, at which point an arrest warrant can be issued.
The grand jury process is very secretive. Witnesses can be called, but defendants have no opportunity to defend themselves. Grand jury testimony is often used to extract information from people who are forced to testify under oath and who cannot have a lawyer present
Moreover, the Fifth Amendment is substantially weakened during this process. But that’s a story for another day.
Anyhow, grand juries are normally seated for 18 months and meet once or twice a month.
Anyhow, grand juries are normally seated for 18 months and meet once or twice a month.
Even people charged on a complaint will go through an indictment process, unless the plea (more later).
What this means is that complaint charges and indictment charges can be very different.
What this means is that complaint charges and indictment charges can be very different.
Complaint charges can get significantly elevated and the indictment charges can be much more substantial. As the investigation proceeds, it’s possible even to supersede indictments. So charges are not fixed for many, many months or years.
If a defendant strikes a deal with prosecutors, they can waive their right to an indictment and be charged on information, which basically means they agree on the charges they’ll plead guilty to, and both parties will have a judge review and sign off on them.
So long story short—just because some chuds have a very weak charge sheet now, that is likely to change.
Overall, we will still be dealing with these cases well into 2022 and 2023.
Overall, we will still be dealing with these cases well into 2022 and 2023.
As always, i am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is a reminder that this process can be confusing and long
