Court Opinion

ID: 9868411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 18:34:26.137158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:50.220635
License: Public Domain

On Petition to Reheae..
The cause is here upon petition for rehearing. It is insisted that the trial judge erréd in refusing to hear evidence to support a ground of the plea in abatement challenging the presentment because made upon testimony of witnesses summoned'by order of the district attorney instead of upon testimony of witnesses sent for by the grand jury.
We did not discuss this question in the opinion filed, because in cases where the grand jury may present an accusation by exercise of its inquisitorial power, the mechanical process by which the witnesses were brought in to testify before the grand jury seemed immaterial.
*415 By the common law, a “presentment” was nothing more than information upon which the Attorney-General might, in his discretion, formulate an indictment for action hy the grand jury. By procedural development and through statutes the grand jury may now make accusation hy presentment instead of indictment. Smith v. State, 20 Tenn. (1 Humph.), 396; State v. Hunter, 24 Tenn. (5 Humph.), 597; State v. Davidson, 171 Tenn., 347, 103 S. W. (2d), 22.
Code, section 11582 and section 11592, which confer broad inquisitorial power upon the grand jury, and authorizing that body to send for witnesses, do not circumscribe the source of evidence upon which the grand jury may accuse by presentment. The old formality requiring examination of witnesses upon an indictment sent in hy the district attorney does not appty to presentments, so that now the grand jury may proceed either upon their own knowledge, or upon evidence obtained by the examination of witnesses and inquire for themselves whether a crime has been committed. The grand jury may make a presentment upon evidence of witnesses. It would be a rather narrow distinction to say that the grand jury can only present offenses upon the testimony of witnesses summoned upon its order and that a presentment would be void if found upon evidence of witnesses who voluntarily appeared before the grand jury or were summoned upon order of the district attorney.
Section 11595 of the Code confers power upon the district attorney to order the clerk to summon witnesses in vacation, but we find no statute conferring the power upon the district attorney to order witnesses sum*416moned during tlie term of court. Tlie statutes no doubt contemplate that while the grand jury is in session witnesses desired will be summoned by order of the foreman of the grand jury. The grand jury is not an agency of the district attorney or of the court. Under our system it is an agency of the government and may act independently of the court and district attorney. The grand jury might refuse to hear witnesses brought before it by order of the district attorney but if instead of refusing it examined the witnesses and upon the testimony of such witnesses found that an offense had been in fact committed, we can conceive of no reason to justify a holding* that a presentment so made is void.
Upon questions of taxation of costs or in complaints of contempt made by the grand jury, the unauthorized action of the district attorney in summoning witnesses during term time might be challenged, as was done in Warner v. State, 81 Tenn. (13 Lea), 52, 54.
Rehearing denied.