Opinion ID: 1145252
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: grand jury v. preliminary hearing

Text: The defendant was indicted by a grand jury. He does not contest the validity of the indictment but claims the denial of a preliminary hearing deprived him of equal treatment under the law. In my view, the defendant was not entitled to a preliminary hearing for the reasons which follow. At least 30 states have granted prosecuting attorneys discretion to initiate felony prosecutions by either grand jury indictment or information and preliminary hearing. [1] The prosecutor's authority is derived variously from the state's constitution or by statute. In Oregon, a search of ancient history or probing constitutional analysis is not required to discern the source of the prosecutor's discretion to initiate criminal prosecutions by submission to the grand jury for indictment or alternatively by the filing of an information. In 1974, the people adopted an amendment to the Oregon Constitution which in no uncertain terms conveyed wide discretionary powers to the prosecutor in the selection of charging methods. Article VII, Sections 4, 5 and 6, provides in part: (4) The district attorney may charge a person on an information filed in circuit court of a crime punishable as a felony if the person appears before the judge of the circuit court and knowingly waives indictment. (5) The district attorney may charge a person on an information filed in circuit court if, after a preliminary hearing before a magistrate, the person has been held to answer upon a showing of probable cause that a crime punishable as a felony has been committed and that the person has committed it, or if the person knowingly waives preliminary hearing. (6) An information shall be substantially in the form provided by law for an indictment. The district attorney may file an amended indictment or information whenever, by ruling of the court, an indictment or information is held to be defective in form. In the Official Voter's Pamphlet prepared by the Secretary of State for the November, 1974, General Election the people were fully apprised of the broad discretionary power they were conferring on their elected district attorneys: The proponents believe that elimination of most grand jury proceedings is a desirable method of accomplishing greater efficiency in criminal cases. The grand jury is duplicative of the preliminary hearing step often employed in a criminal case. If such a preliminary hearing discloses that probable cause exists to proceed against the accused, there is no need for the grand jury to repeat the process of determining whether there is probable cause. In cases where the district attorney is himself in doubt as to probable cause to proceed, he may, under the proposed amendment, take such cases to the grand jury. He may also take any felony case to the grand jury, so that the district attorney in smaller, less busy counties may continue to employ the grand jury in all felony cases if he chooses. Thus, the proposed system, based on the discretion of the district attorney, assures that each county can follow the system best suited to its needs. This constitutional amendment was enacted by the people with support from various groups closely connected with the justice system.    Groups on record in favor of this proposal include the Criminal Law Committee of the Oregon State Bar, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Oregon District Attorneys Association, and the Oregon Criminal Law Revision Commission. Official Voters' Pamphlet of Oregon, 1974 General Election, p. 14. Voters were advised by opponents that the measure would provide district attorneys with significant discretionary authority. But this measure does not abolish the Grand Jury and substitute a needed reform. Instead it allows the district attorney to use this antiquated and unfair method at his option. Id. at 15. This recent history evinces that no preliminary hearing following grand jury indictment was intended by the people nor was there an intent to require prosecutors to have standards, articulated or not, for their charging decisions. This is not to suggest that prosecutors should have unbridled, runaway authority to charge as they please, without regard for invidious discrimination, fundamental rights or human dignity. But that is not the issue here, which the majority candidly notes: Nothing in the record suggests prejudice or bad faith on the part of the prosecutor. (at 519). This case calls for nothing more than an analysis of prosecutorial discretion applied to the instant facts. The majority, as in Clark, cites Hawkins v. Superior Court, 22 Cal.3d 584, 150 Cal. Rptr. 435, 586 P.2d 916 (1978), where the Supreme Court of California analyzed the alleged procedural advantages afforded defendants prosecuted by information versus those who were indicted by a grand jury. In Hawkins, the California court ruled in a 5-2 majority that the prosecutor's decision to proceed by information or by grand jury indictment was totally discretionary and consequently the state had arbitrarily created a discriminatory classification for felony defendants. [2] In Clark, this court seemingly rejected the Hawkins court's classification scheme with the following dicta: We do not follow the Hawkins court to the conclusion, however, that this difference between two available procedures necessarily represents a denial of equal protection of the laws, regardless of showing which defendants receive one or the other procedure. Hawkins reached this conclusion in `classification' terms, by defining as two classes those who are indicted and those who are charged by information. But we think this is an example of the `circular' use of the concept of `class' mentioned above. The distinction to be tested is the use or nonuse of preliminary hearings. The `classes' said to fail the test of equal protection are the `class' of those defendants who receive preliminary hearings (because charged by information) and the `class' of those who do not (because indicted). But these defendants do not exist as categories or as classes with distinguishing characteristics before and apart from a prosecutor's decision how to charge one, or some, or all defendants. Aside from the manner in which the decision is made, see City of Klamath Falls, supra, 289 Or. at 785-785 [619 P.2d 217] (Lent, J., dissenting), defendants charged under either procedure are `classes' only as an effect of the dual procedural scheme itself. As in City of Klamath Falls, supra, `these defendants [i.e. those who do not receive a preliminary hearing] are not denied such a privilege as individual persons, but only because they are members of a class of persons who are prosecuted [by indictment] as distinct from persons prosecuted [on an information.]' 289 Or at 776. State v. Clark, 291 Or. at 242-43, 630 P.2d 810. The court further elaborated the principles announced by Clark in State v. Edmonson, 291 Or. at 253-54, 630 P.2d 822.    In Clark, we held that the simple coexistence of the two means of initiating a prosecution, by information with a preliminary hearing or by indictment without one, did not in itself grant to `any citizen or class of citizens privileges, or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens,' as forbidden by Or Const art I, § 20. The two methods are capable of valid administration, if the `terms' on which one or the other method is used are defensible under the constitutional guarantees of equal treatment. We held that the attack failed `[w]ithout a showing that the administration of Or Const art VII, § 5 and ORS 135.070-135.185 in fact denied defendant individually, or a class to which he belongs, the equal privilege of a preliminary hearing with other citizens of the state similarly situated.' State v. Clark, 291 Or at 243 [630 P.2d 810]. For the same reason, we rejected defendant's claim under the 14th amendment. In other words, defendant's constitutional claim requires a showing how the choice of procedure is administered, and whether it offers or denies preliminary hearings to individual defendants, or to social, geographic, or other classes of defendants (apart from the `classification' formed by the choice itself) purely haphazardly or otherwise on terms that have no satisfactory explanation under art I, § 20. See, State v. Clark, 291 Or at 241 [630 P.2d 810]. Hawkins received a strong dissent and was described by the dissenters as a wholly novel proposition. Hawkins has since been discredited in every jurisdiction which has considered it, including Oregon ( Clark, supra ), People v. Franklin, 80 Ill. App.3d 128, 35 Ill.Dec. 121, 398 N.E.2d 1071 (1979); People v. Dist. Court for Second Judicial Dist., 199 Colo. 398, 610 P.2d 490 (1980); King v. Venters, 595 S.W.2d 714 (Ky. 1980); Commonwealth v. Bestwick, 489 Pa. 603, 414 A.2d 1373 (1980); State ex rel. Rowe v. Ferguson, 268 S.E.2d 45 (W. Va. 1980). This substantial weight of judicial authority clearly determined the grand jury and the preliminary hearing are acceptable constitutional substitutes that can coexist without offending equal protection guarantees. I must further point out that we considered Hawkins in a pre- Clark decision and rejected the California court's holding at that time. See, State ex rel. Automotive Emp. v. Murchison, 289 Or. 265, 611 P.2d 1169 (1980) (Lent, J., dissenting). Clark and Edmonson rejected the concept that the denial of a post-indictment preliminary hearing deprives a defendant of equal privileges under Article I, Section 20, of the Oregon Constitution. In my view a defendant is only entitled to a prompt probable cause determination, and I am prepared to say, and the majority does not deny, that the grand jury or an information/preliminary hearing procedure are equally reliable procedures for determining the probability of guilt. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). Accord, People v. Franklin, supra, 80 Ill. App.3d at 131, 35 Ill.Dec. 121, 398 N.E.2d 1071.