# Grand Jury A **grand jury** is a body of 16 to 23 citizens that decides whether there is probable cause to charge a federal felony. The [[Fifth Amendment]] makes its indictment a prerequisite for any "capital, or otherwise infamous crime," and a defendant may waive it in favor of a prosecutor's **information**. Twelve concurring votes return a **true bill**; a refusal is a **no bill**. The proceeding is one-sided by design. The prosecutor selects the evidence, the rules of evidence do not apply, there is no judge in the room, the target has no right to appear or to counsel inside, and the whole matter is secret under Rule 6(e). The predictable result is a body that indicts at rates approaching unanimity — hence the durable joke about the ham sandwich. What makes the grand jury structurally interesting is not that it rarely refuses but *when* it refuses: a no bill is the only point in the pipeline at which an ordinary citizen can stop a federal prosecution outright, and it became visible in 2025–26 in precisely the politically sensitive matters where the Department's own internal screening had been bypassed. See [[How a Federal Prosecution Begins and Ends]] for the grand jury's position in the charging sequence. > [!note] Stub > Still to be added: composition and term, Rule 6 and secrecy, the subpoena and immunity powers, *Costello* and *Williams* on what the prosecutor need not present, the re-presentation rule after a no bill, and the 2025–26 no-bill cluster. ## See also - [[How a Federal Prosecution Begins and Ends]] - [[Justice Manual]] · [[Prosecutorial Discretion]] - [[Federal Judiciary Tree]]