I think this article glosses over the purpose of the grand jury - the grand jury doesn't vote to convict, they vote on whether or not to indict. The entire purpose is to prevent people from being harassed by prosecutors. They review all of the evidence that the prosecutor has gathered and determine if it's sufficient to send people to trial. If the prosecutor has compelling evidence, then they go to trial and both sides present their case. If not, the defendant never goes to trial to begin with.
The problem with this assertion is that it implies that cases go to trial. Most never do: the charges are used with the threat of extended imprisonment to secure plea bargains.
Since most never see trial, the Grand Jury is the closest to a "trial by peers" that most accused will ever face.
The problem is with the post-indictment actions of prosecutors rather than the way grand juries are set up though.
It's certainly within the realms of possibility to introduce legislation which limits the scope of plea bargains though (most likely by preventing prosecutors from pursuing charges and sentencing options they have indicated a willingness to drop in return for a guilty plea for a significantly lesser offence)
I may be misunderstanding, but that sounds a little off. Suppose that Some Guy has been arrested for having some marijuana, and at the time of his arrest, he also had a plastic ziplock bag in his possession.
This case gets taken to the Grand Jury and they indict the guy for possession of marijuana, and dealing marijuana. At this point, the prosecutor could potentially offer some different plea deals:
-1) "Plead guilty to possession, and we drop the dealing/distribution"
-2) "Plead guilty to both, and we change the sentence from 5 years to 1 year."
Are you suggesting that in case 1, once the prosecutor has offered that deal, that the prosecutor can no longer pursue the dealing/distribution charge, and that in case 2 the prosecutor can no longer pursue a sentence longer than 1 year? At that point, what purpose does a plea deal serve? As the indicted, you'd be a fool to accept the plea deal since you're guaranteeing the (now) worst outcome of the trial for yourself. As a prosecutor who knows that, you probably won't bother to offer any plea deals. I don't know if this is necessarily a problem...but then why not just get rid of the concept of a plea-deal?
The conceptually more pleasing solution would be to see the grand jury not indict for the distribution charge in the first place, because of the lack of real evidence (a plastic baggie does not a dealer make). In that situation, the prosecutor cannot attempt to trump up charges to motivate a plea-deal. Of course, I don't know how you actually fix that...
I'm not suggesting that prosecutors should have no leeway at all to press for higher charges.
I am suggesting that the plea bargain becomes more along the lines of the accused's legal representation advising them "the prosecutor has made a formal offer to drop the dealing charge if you plead guilty to possession. They can still pursue the dealing charge if you plead not guilty, but because they've made that offer you'd be looking at an extra year if also convicted of dealing rather than an extra seven"
I think we'd see fewer plea bargain offers, but more importantly people would only accept them if they thought it more than likely they would be convicted anyway, which in theory is the point of permitting plea bargains.
