Mick Harrison, an attorney for an organization representing 9-11 victims, recently discussed a case involving citizens’ rights to submit evidence of a possible crime to a federal grand jury. As described by Harrison, federal statute says that US attorneys have a mandatory duty to submit evidence to a grand jury, but the federal prosecutor has refused to submit the evidence to a special grand jury investigating the 9-11 attacks. Lower courts have ruled that victims do not have standing to enforce the statute. The case is now awaiting the Supreme Court to decide whether to hear the case. See video starting at 3:50 for an outline of the case:
For the first 100 years of the republic, most bills of indictment came from private citizens not government prosecutors:
Any citizen could bring a matter before a grand jury directly, from a public work that needed repair, to the delinquent conduct of a public official, to a complaint of a crime, and grand juries could conduct their own investigations. In that era most criminal prosecutions were conducted by private parties, either a law enforcement officer, a lawyer hired by a crime victim or their family, or even by laymen. A layman could bring a bill of indictment to the grand jury; if the grand jury found there was sufficient evidence for a trial, that the act was a crime under law, and that the court had jurisdiction, it would return the indictment to the complainant. The grand jury would then appoint the complaining party to exercise the authority of an attorney general, that is, one having a general power of attorney to represent the state in the case. The grand jury served to screen out incompetent or malicious prosecutions. The advent of official public prosecutors in the later decades of the 19th century largely displaced private prosecutions.
Grand juries in the United States - Wikipedia
Grand juries are in the Fifth Ammendment specifically to prevent government abuse and to assure that government officials are not above the law. The First Amendment states that citizens have the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances”, and history shows that the right included submitting evidence to a grand jury. This case could have great consequences if it restores grand juries to their original function.
For a copy of the case that is up for review by the Supreme Court see: