The decision if Donald Trump he will have to be indicted and then arrested for the Stormy Daniels case will have to be taken by the grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg. Typical institution of the American judicial system, the grand jury is convened by a prosecutor to determine if there is sufficient evidence to proceed with an indictment.
In a closed-door proceeding, the grand jury also carries out an investigative function, with the power to issue subpoenas for witnesses and documents. Witnesses must answer questions from grand jury members, without the assistance of a lawyer.
Jurors are drawn from lists of registered voters or other public lists, in numbers ranging from 6 to 23 members. Grand juries usually have between 16 and 23 members. Hence the name ‘grand jury’ compared to the smaller ‘petit’ jury of actual trials.
The two juries have different tasks: while the smaller one of the trials has to decide whether a defendant is to be held guilty, the one of the ‘grand jury’ has to decide only if he should be indicted. Another important difference is that the decision of the grand jury does not have to be unanimous as happens for the jury: sometimes two-thirds or three-quarters of the jurors are enough to decide an indictment.
The entire grand jury proceeding, which can last up to several months, is then marked by the utmost secrecy, completely inaccessible to the media to protect the jurors from intimidation and to avoid exposing people to charges who will not be indicted.
While the grand jury is always used for federal charges, the state judiciary does not always. Although all states allow them to be convened, only half of US states actually use them, with the others preferring to use preliminary hearings to decide whether or not to charge a suspect.
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