Probable cause: How a grand jury works
Grand juries, like the one considering a possible indictment of former President Donald Trump, are not at all like trial juries.
Trial juries typically hear testimony over several days and often deliberate for hours before returning their verdict. Grand juries routinely hear testimony on a few dozen cases in a single day, meaning they rarely take much time at all to deliberate.
Grand juries are composed of 23 members and can approve – or “true bill” – an indictment with a majority vote. Trial juries, which have 12 or six members, depending on the type of case, must return unanimous verdicts in criminal cases in order to convict someone.
And trial juries must find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest burden-of-proof in legal proceedings. A grand jury’s burden-of-proof threshold is probable cause. State Supreme Court precedent has defined probable cause as “a fair probability – less than a certainty but more than a mere suspicion of probability.”
- Live updates: AJC grand jury watch
