And what the hell is with optional grand juries anyway?? The entire purpose of the grand jury system is to get buy-in from the public non-legal-professional community on the possible guilt of the party being indicted. It's a check on a government power subject to misuse. How the HELL can that be optional for the very people it's supposed to supervise?? This very case shows why it's bad to be able to skip that step. Just like jury nullification, it's there for a reason, yet they sit there and lie without consequence to tell you it isn't.
Yep --
Having the grand-jury stage be optional might make the justice system more efficiently if (1) the stage was only skipped in cases where a prosecutor could be certain that an indictment would be forthcoming if it were sought, and (2) prosecutors were held personally accountable (including being fired and/or sued) in cases where it can be shown retrospectively that a grand-jury indictment would not have been a slam-dunk. In other words, prosecutors would be entitled to skip the grand jury step only in those cases that were sufficiently strong that they would not mind being held personally accountable if their judgment wasn't correct.
The fundamental problem today is not lack of procedural safeguards, but rather a lack of accountability for government personnel who act in bad faith. Adding procedural safeguards won't help if those in charge of applying them don't act in good faith. And if government personnel do act in good faith, most of the problems the safeguards are supposed to prevent won't occur anyway.