Opinion ID: 2162363
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Delaware Constitution Common Law Grand Jury

Text: The Delaware Bill of Rights, in Article I, Section 8 of the present Delaware Constitution of 1897, provides: No person shall for any indictable offense be proceeded against criminally by information, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service in time of war or public danger. . . . The effect of the decision in 1897 to retain this section from the Delaware Constitutions of 1792 and 1831 in the present Delaware Constitution is two-fold: first, to establish the grand jury as a constitutional body; and second, to preserve the historical and highly prized safeguard of Grand Jury action' with its common law powers and attributes, except as modified by other provisions of the [Delaware Constitution]. [35] At its common law inception, an indictment could be amended only by the grand jury that had returned the true bill. [36] The common law evolved to permit judicial amendments to indictments, as to matters of form, with the concurrence of the grand jury. [37] The rationale for the common law rule consent requirement was that, since an indictment was the act of the grand jury under oath, the court could not make alterations without the grand jury's authorization. [38] In furtherance of this common law principle, the grand jury, at the time it was sworn, consented to amendment of its indictments by the court, with regard to matters of form but not matters of substance. [39] This common law practice has been continued in Delaware. Today, the consent of the grand jury to amendments of matters of form is obtained when the grand jury presents its indictments to the [Superior] Court. [40] In Delaware, when indictments are accepted from the foreperson in open court, the grand jury is assembled and the Prothonotary asks the following questions: Do you have any bills or presentments to hand to the Superior Court? Are you content that the Superior Court shall amend any matter of form without your consent, providing nothing of substance is changed? If the first question is answered affirmatively, it is routine for an affirmative response to be made to the latter inquiry also. [41] Pursuant to this historic practice in Delaware, by virtue of which the prior consent of the grand jury is obtained, the Superior Court is authorized to amend indictments as to matters of form only. [42] Accordingly, Rule 7(e) of the Superior Court Criminal Rules permits an indictment to be amended before verdict if no additional or different offense is charged and if substantial rights of the defendant are not prejudiced. This rule reflects the common law grand jury principles that have been embodied in the Delaware Constitution. [43] The Delaware Bill of Rights permits grand jury indictments to be amended as to form, but not as to substance. [44] The right to have the grand jury make the charge on its own judgment is a right that remains guaranteed by the present Delaware Constitution of 1897. If the Superior Court could amend indictments substantively at the prosecutor's request, the State would have the power to obtain convictions based on theories or on evidence possibly rejected, or not considered, by the grand jury. Justice Miller, writing for the United States Supreme Court, stated: If it lies within the province of a court to change the charging part of an indictment to suit its own notions of what it ought to have been, or what the grand jury would probably have made it if their attention had been called to suggested changes, the great importance which the common law attaches to an indictment by a grand jury, as a prerequisite to a prisoner's trial for a crime, and without which the Constitution says `no person shall be held to answer,' may be frittered away until its value is almost destroyed. [45] For more than two hundred years Delaware's Constitutions have afforded its citizens the right of being proceeded against in a felony criminal prosecution only upon an indictment by the grand jury. The prejudice caused by the Superior Court's substantive amendment of an indictment is always the same  the defendant loses the protection of being proceeded against in a felony prosecution only upon indictment by the grand jury, that is guaranteed by Delaware Constitution. [46]