The old saying is that the district attorney can get a grand jury to indict anyone or anything, up to and including a ham sandwich. That certainly seems the case in Mecklenburg County, in which, as the UPoR reports:
During a single four-hour workday last week, a Mecklenburg County grand jury heard 276 cases and handed down 276 indictments.
That means the 18 jurors heard evidence, asked questions, weighed whether the charges merit a trial, then voted on the indictments – all at the average rate of one case every 52 seconds
Changing the system to either make grand juries more than a minor speed bump before trial or to eliminate them entirely just isn’t going to happen any time soon. Which is news bad news for ham sandwiches or people prosecutors think are as guilty as a ham sandwich.
