Can you name one person who was billed by one of these “citizen’s” grand juries, put on trial in one of their courts, convicted and sent to an actual prison?
I will start researching cases and names and outcomes of cases for you, but in the interim I am providing this additional information taken from wikipedia concerning Grand Juries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury
In the early decades of the United States grand juries played a major role in public matters. During that period counties followed the traditional practice of requiring all decisions be made by at least 12 of the grand jurors, so that for a size of 23 a bare majority would be 12. Any citizen could bring a matter before it directly, from a public work that needed repair, to a delinquent official, to a complaint of a crime, and they could conduct their own investigations. In that era most criminal prosecutions were conducted by private parties, either a law enforcement officer, a lawyer hired by a crime victim or his family, or even by laymen, who could bring a bill of indictment to the grand jury, and if the grand jury found there was sufficient evidence for a trial, that the act was a crime under law, and that the court had jurisdiction, then by returning the indictment to the complainant, it appointed him to exercise the authority of an attorney general, that is, one having a general power of attorney to represent the state in the case. The grand jury [also] served to screen out incompetent or malicious prosecutions.
Grand juries are today virtually unknown OUTSIDE the United States. Today approximately half of the states in the U.S. employ them. A grand jury is meant to be part of the system of checks and balances. A prosecutor must convince the grand jury, an impartial panel of ordinary citizens, that there exists reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a prima facie case that a crime has been committed. The grand jury can compel witnesses to testify before them. Unlike the trial itself, the grand jury’s proceedings are secret; the defendant and his or her counsel are generally not present for other witnesses’ testimony. The grand jury’s decision is either a “true bill” (meaning that there is a case to answer), or “no true bill”.
Gran Juries at the Federal level:
Charges involving “capital or infamous crimes” under federal jurisdiction must be presented to a grand jury, under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.