Court Opinion

ID: 9484346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:49:49.066889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:10.946636
License: Public Domain

HALL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:
I concur in the judgment of the majority, and I join all of its opinion except Part IV. I would hold simply that a district court may not quash a facially valid indictment based solely on the insufficiency or incompetence of the evidence presented to the grand jury. I think that Costello v. United States, 350 U.S. 359, 76 S.Ct. 406, 100 L.Ed. 397 (1956), unambiguously so holds. We should, and can, step in to remedy constitutional defects in or prosecutorial abuse of the grand jury process, but the criminal trial and the petit jury are our system’s checks on groundless indictments, and I do not believe that the Constitution requires or permits a district court to act as an intermediate stratum of review.