Replies

The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution mentions Grand Juries as applicable to the federal government; that part of the Fifth Amendment has never been applied to the states.

However, at least 27 states use some kind of grand jury as a matter of state law. Missouri is among them.

The number of grand jurors in state (or local, within that state) grand jury who must vote for an indictment is a matter of that state's law. An indictment generally involves a supermajority vote of the jurors under those laws.

In Missouri, there are twelve jurors on a grand jury. Nine of the grand jurors must vote for an indictment; otherwise, it's a 'no-bill.'

From The Court Process, an official state publication by the Missouri Attorney General, page 4:

"GRAND JURY
A grand jury replaces the preliminary hearing in certain cases as a method by which criminal charges can be filed. A grand jury is a panel of private citizens, chosen in a manner similar to the way in which trial juries are chosen, whose job is to look into allegations of criminal activity. The prosecutor presents evidence to the 12 grand jurors, nine of whom must agree on whether a crime was committed and whether there is probable cause to believe the defendant committed it. As with a preliminary hearing, the case is either bound over to the circuit court or the defendant is freed. Grand jury proceedings are closed to the public. Defendants do not attend unless they are testifying as witnesses."

As an aside, there's no such thing as double jeopardy with respect to a grand jury, because jeopardy never attaches - in simplistic terms, no proceeding has commenced that could result in a defending being found guilty.

As a result, in the case of a no-bill and as long as the statute(s) of limitations for the possible crime(s) has/have not yet run, a prosecutor may present evidence against the same person again regarding the same (or different, or both) charges before another grand jury or juries. There may some limitations on that, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were, but I don't know of any.

If you want to know more about Missouri Grand Juries, it's addressed in Missouri Rev. Stat. Ch. 540 - Grand Juries and Their Proceedings.

BREAKING: Ferguson Grand Jury Fails to Reach Decision on Indictment

Thanks for the reply and useful information. The problem here was really the sloppy reporting and misleading headline. The headline containing the word "fail(s)" gave a totally wrong impression since the meaning of "fails" has a sense of finality.

Apparently all that happened is the GJ went home for the weekend having announced no decision, and they will reconvene tomorrow (Monday). GJs don't "fail", they either indict or not.