By Robert Simels
Originally published in amNewYork on
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Robert Simels opens with a personal story. In 1984, while he was representing a client in a narcotics case, federal prosecutors in Manhattan served him with a grand jury subpoena for his fee arrangements. The Second Circuit quashed the subpoena as an abuse of the grand jury process.
He explains that the grand jury is supposed to be an independent body, a principle the Supreme Court recognized as early as 1919 in Blair v. United States. In practice, prosecutors decide what evidence grand jurors hear and what charges they consider, and a grand jury that acts on its own is rare.
Simels then describes recent cases in which judges blocked grand jury subpoenas they found improper. These include subpoenas for medical records of transgender young people, subpoenas in Minnesota that Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz found were driven by an improper purpose, and subpoenas connected to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that Chief Judge Jeb Boasberg of the federal court in Washington, D.C. quashed as political retaliation. He also notes that prosecutors withdrew subpoenas to reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and that the Broadview Six case in Chicago collapsed.
Quoting the Justice Department's own manual on fairness to the grand jury, Simels argues that the safeguards are not working on their own and urges judges to review grand jury transcripts as a routine check.
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This page is a summary prepared for robertsimels.com. The full commentary was published by amNewYork and remains on amNewYork's site.
Robert Simels. Robert Simels hosts the podcast Injustice for All and serves as a consultant on criminal justice matters. He is no longer practicing law.
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