Opinion ID: 2162363
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Delaware Constitution 1897 Grand Jury Debate

Text: At common law, both in England and in colonial America, no one could be proceeded against in a criminal prosecution, for an indictable offense, unless a true bill was returned by the grand jury. [17] That common law right was preserved in the original Delaware Constitution of 1776. It has been set forth explicitly in every subsequent Delaware Constitution. The purpose of requiring indictment by a grand jury in the 1776, 1792, and 1831 Delaware Constitutions, and specifically prohibiting proceeding by an Attorney General's information, was to limit a person's jeopardy for criminal offenses to those felony charges that are brought by a group of his or her fellow citizens, who are acting independently of the prosecuting attorney. [18] During the Delaware Constitutional Convention of 1897, there was a proposal by Edward G. Bradford, Jr. [19] to eliminate the right to indictment by a grand jury for certain felonies. One of the delegates who spoke in opposition to that suggestion was William C. Spruance (Spruance), a prominent lawyer from New Castle County. [20] Spruance acknowledged the history of integrity established by prior Delaware Attorney Generals. [21] Nevertheless, in urging the 1897 Convention not to remove the grand jury protection that had existed in the Delaware Constitutions of 1776, 1792 and 1831, Spruance stated: But I want this Convention to know, and the people of Delaware to know, that I hold my liberties at the mercy of no man. I hold my head erect. I obey the laws of my State and my country, and I want no law to be made  no Constitution made  that shall subject me or put me at the mercy of any Attorney-General. More than that, I do not want it to be in his power to transfix me before the public gaze as a violator of the law, and bring me to the bar of public opinion at his own sweet will. I want to put a curb in his mouth that before he shall open it to make a public accusation against me, he shall make it before a grand jury, with his witnesses there to make out a prima facie case. I want this done before he shall have the power to drag me before the bar of public opinion, much less before he shall drag me before the judges for trial as to my guilt or innocence. And when at last that ordeal has been passed, when having got to a trial  not by the will merely of the Attorney-General or allowed not to be tried by his forbearance  but when I am brought to trial by a finding of the grand jury of my State, then I want something more. I want a trial by a jury of my countrymen. [22] Ten of the thirty delegates to the Delaware Constitution Convention of 1897 were lawyers. [23] The debates during the 1897 Convention reflect a depth of scholarly knowledge about the historic evolution of the common law and the role reserved for the states vis a vis the role delegated to federal government in the United States Constitution. [24] The 1897 debates discussed the common law role of both the grand jury and the petit jury. Spruance also read at length from the Commentaries on the Law of England written by that country's pre-eminent eighteenth century legal authority, William Blackstone, which states, The law has therefore wisely placed this strong and two-fold barrier of presentment and trial by jury between the liberties of the people and the prerogative of the Crown. [25] The 1897 debaters noted that, prior to the Revolutionary War, John Dickinson had studied the common law of England at the Middle Temple, making Dickinson a contemporary colleague of William Blackstone at that Inn of Court in London. [26] This was significant for two reasons. First, John Dickinson was elected president of the Delaware Constitutional Convention in 1791. [27] Second, the provisions requiring grand jury indictments were first specifically identified in the Delaware Constitution of 1792, where  all of the fundamental features of the jury system, as they existed at common law, [were] preserved for Delaware's citizens. [28] Moreover, the 1897 Delaware Convention specifically addressed the implications of the 1884 holding by the United States Supreme Court in Hurtado v. California , that the Fifth Amendment grand jury right in the United States Constitution did not apply in state court criminal proceedings. [29] In further response to the suggestion that grand jury indictment be eliminated in favor of prosecution by information for certain offenses, Mr. Spruance described presentment of an indictment by a grand jury before permitting the commencement of a felony prosecution, as the other palladium of liberty  the first being trial by petit jury. [30] In support of retaining the grand jury section in the Delaware Constitution, William C. Spruance argued, in part: I have had some experience in that business. I have been District Attorney and Assistant District Attorney of the United States, and of course I never had occasion to go beyond the express provisions of the Constitution, and never filed an information in my life. I prepared indictments and sent them before the grand jury. . . . [T]he Constitution of the United States interposes a bar so far as the District Attorney of the United States is concerned. It imposes a bar between the Executive officers and the citizens in this; that they shall not bring this man to trial; they shall not make this charge except through a grand jury which sits in secret, hears one side of the case and does not hear anything for the defense. It hears all the prosecuting witnesses may have to say upon the subject and what the prosecuting attorney may have to say, and the Constitution says to him if you cannot make out a prima facie case to the satisfaction of the grand jury, then that man shall never be called upon to answer to that charge. Our forefathers found that a safe protection; and my forty years and more of experience in the practice of the administration of justice leads me to give my hearty and unqualified approval to that system. I hope never to see it abolished. If the State cannot make out a case where they have access to that tribunal and where the accused has no access at all, either in person or by his witnesses; I say if the prosecuting officer cannot make out a case to the satisfaction of the grand jury. . . Then the accused should go free. [31] The proposal to limit the fundamental rights of a grand jury indictment and a jury trial was probably the most hotly debated item of the convention. [32] When the debates ended, the grand jury and jury trial protections of the 1776, 1792, and 1831 Delaware Constitutions were retained in the 1897 Delaware Constitution's Bill of Rights. [33] It is poignant to note that one hundred years later, the United States Supreme Court has reaffirmed the views expressed by Spruance in 1897, by stating, [t]he grand jury, like the petit jury, `acts as a vital check against the wrongful exercise of power by the State and its prosecutors.' [34]