Court Opinion

ID: 9724579
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:03:04.235645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:02.676685
License: Public Domain

Currie, C. J.
{concurring). I fully concur in the opinion of the court. This concurring opinion will be directed solely to the contention of appellant that the provision of the Fifth amendment to the United States constitution that, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, . . .” has application to a prosecution for felony in a state court.
As Mr. Justice Cardozo pointed out in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), 302 U. S. 319, 323-325, 58 Sup. Ct. 149, *25082 L. Ed. 288, the due-process clause of the Fourteenth amendment does not embody all of the prohibitions of the Bill of Rights (amendments I to VIII) but only those “found to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, . . .” The Palko opinion, by way of illustration, points out that the immunity from prosecution except by indictment of a grand jury is “not of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty” and to abolish it is not to violate a “ ‘principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.’ ” Id. page 325.
There are those who maintain that the Fourteenth amendment originally was intended to incorporate the entire Bill of Rights. A complete refutation of this hypothesis is to be found in Professor Fairman’s great contribution to legal history, “Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate the Bill of Rights?” 2 Stanford Law Review (1949), 5. One of the telling facts marshaled by Fairman is that a number of states which ratified the Fourteenth amendment had provisions in their own state constitutions or statutes which were in direct conflict with certain provisions of the Bill of Rights. Included among these states were Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, and Michigan which did not require grand jury indictments in all felonies. For example, the supreme court of Connecticut in State v. Hayes (1941), 127 Conn. 543, 581, 18 Atl. (2d) 895, declared that proceeding in criminal prosecutions by information was “in accordance with the practice in this state for nearly two centuries and approved by our courts.”
Fairman relates in some detail what transpired in Wisconsin as reflecting the understanding that this state could not have ratified the Fourteenth amendment with any idea that it incorporated the Bill of Rights. When the legislature ratified this amendment in 1867, sec. 8, art. I, of the Wisconsin constitution provided, “No person shall be held *251to answer for a criminal offense, unless on the presentment, or indictment of a grand jury, Then on March 9, 1869 — less than a year after the Fourteenth amendment had been ratified by the required number of states — the legislature adopted a resolution to amend this section of the state constitution so as to delete the requirement of a presentment or indictment by a grand jury. The succeeding legislature passed the resolution, the people approved of it in a referendum, and the amendment became effective in 1870. Then two years later this court decided Rowan v. State (1872), 30 Wis. 129. This is rather conclusive evidence that the contemporary understanding in Wisconsin was that ratification of the Fourteenth amendment did not impose the requirement of the Fifth amendment of a grand jury presentment or indictment in state criminal prosecutions.
Over the years there has been a rather steady movement away from grand jury indictments and substituting in its place the initiation of criminal prosecutions by complaint or information. Even England in 1933 abolished the grand jury.1 While in 1791, when the first 10 amendments to the United States constitution containing the Bill of Rights became effective,2 presentment or indictment by grand jury may have been implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, it had ceased to be so regarded by many people when the Fourteenth amendment was enacted and ratified. Today there are at least 21 states, in which an information is *252available as a substitute for a grand jury in all criminal prosecutions.3 United States District Judge John W. Oliver recently pointed out these pertinent facts showing the trend of opposition to the grand jury: William Howard Taft in 1915 testified against the grand jury before the New York State Constitutional Convention; in 1920 the American Judicature Society joined the ranks of those favoring complete abolition; in 1928 the American Law Institute recommended that all criminal prosecutions be commenced by information alone; and the Wickersham Commission’s report in 1931 to President Hoover recommended that grand juries be abolished.4
While some present justices of the United States supreme court favor incorporation of all provisions of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth amendment, it seems unlikely that a majority of the court will so decide thus freezing upon the states compulsory presentment or indictment by grand jury when so many jurists and students of criminal law do not regard it as essential to ordered liberty, and the trend for many years has been steadily toward its abolition.

 Administration of Justice (Misc. Provisions) Act, 1933, 23 & 24 Geo. 5, c. 36, sec. 1. See also Elliff, Notes on the Abolition of the English Grand Jury, 29 J. Crim., C. & P. S. (1938) 3. In 1827 Jeremy Bentham declared that long before that time the grand jury had outlived its usefulness. 2 Bentham Rationale of Judicial Evidence, 313, cited in 74 Harvard Law Review (1960), 591, footnote 12.

 See Historical Note, USCA, Constitution of the United States Annotated, Amendments 1 to 5, page 10.

 Watts, Grand Jury: Sleeping Watchdog or Expensive Antique. 37 N. C. Law Review (1959), 290, 291.

 Oliver, The Grand Jury: An Effort to Get a Dragon out of His Cave, 1962 Washington University Law Quarterly, 166, 183.