# How a Federal Prosecution Begins and Ends The spine every prosecution page in this vault hangs off implicitly, drawn once explicitly. A federal criminal case runs from predication through investigation, the charging decision, the grand jury, arraignment, discovery and motions, the plea that resolves nearly all of them, the rare trial, sentencing under the [[Federal Sentencing Guidelines]], and appeal. Beside that formal track runs a second one that decides which cases exist at all: the supervision chain from line prosecutor up through the U.S. Attorney, the [[Justice Manual]]'s approval requirements for sensitive categories, and the declination that closes a matter and leaves no record anywhere. It is the process companion to [[DOJ Component Tree]], which shows who the prosecutors are, and to [[Federal Judiciary Tree]], which shows whose courtroom they end up in. Where [[How an Emergency Stay Application Moves Through the Courts]] maps the fast civil track to the Supreme Court, this one maps the slow criminal track that almost never gets there. **The single structural fact this map exists to show: there are two filters on whether a federal prosecution happens, and they were never designed to carry the same load.** The internal filter — supervision, the Justice Manual's approval matrix, [[Prosecutorial Discretion]] exercised as a declination — does essentially all the screening, and it is invisible and unreviewable. The external filter — the [[Grand Jury]] — is nominally the constitutional check and in practice almost never refuses: in fiscal year 2013, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics' own count, federal grand juries returned a no bill in **five** matters out of **196,969**. For fifty years that division of labor held, and it held because the internal filter was doing the work. In 2025–26 the arrangement was tested from the top. When politically sensitive matters were routed around the internal screening, the grand jury — a body with no institutional capacity for the job, no adversary in the room and no access to anything the prosecutor does not show it — began absorbing the load and visibly refusing. And the check that actually ended the two most prominent of those cases was neither filter: Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the [[James Comey]] and [[Letitia James]] indictments in November 2025 on the ground that [[Lindsey Halligan]] had never lawfully held the office of U.S. Attorney, so **every act flowing from her appointment — including signing the indictments — was void.** The pipeline was stopped at its own top, on an appointments defect, by a question no stage of this map is built to ask. > [!note] How to read this chart > `──▶` = the main path · `└─▶` = a branch or exit · `◇` = a decision point · `✕` = the case ends · `⚑` = a load-bearing stage · `▣` = the supervision layer running beside the formal track · `[ ]` = a dated note or caveat. Stages are numbered in the order a defendant encounters them, not in order of consequence — the two stages that determine the most outcomes are **2** and **6**, and neither takes place in a courtroom. Everything inside the fence is plain text; linked entities appear in the prose, Notes and See also. Stage 10 is a **dated block** and is the only part of this map that goes stale within the year. ``` HOW A FEDERAL PROSECUTION BEGINS AND ENDS (as of 16 September 2026) │ Legend: ──▶ main path └─▶ branch/exit ◇ decision ✕ case ends ⚑ load-bearing stage │ ▣ supervision layer [ ] dated note or caveat │ Scale: 66,662 individuals sentenced in federal court in FY2025. 98% of all cases │ resolved by GUILTY PLEA; more than 99% of immigration cases did. Roughly │ 2-3% of federal convictions follow a trial. │ [ U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2025 Sourcebook / 2025 Individual Datafile, │ covering 1 Oct 2024 - 30 Sep 2025. ] │ ■ 0. PREDICATION (before a case exists, someone decides to look) │ An agency opens a matter: FBI, DEA, ATF, HSI, IRS-CI, an Inspector General, or a │ referral from a regulator, a grand jury in another district, or a member of Congress. │ └─▶ no judicial officer is involved. Nothing here is public. Nothing here is reviewable. │ [ The opening threshold is set by agency guidelines (for the FBI, the AG Guidelines │ for Domestic FBI Operations and the DIOG), not by statute. Changing that threshold │ changes what is investigated without changing a single criminal law. ] │ ├─◆ 1. INVESTIGATION (agents build it; the prosecutor supplies the compulsory process) │ │ AGENT TOOLS ─────────────── interviews · surveillance · informants · consensual │ │ recordings · undercover work · administrative subpoenas │ │ COURT-AUTHORIZED TOOLS ──── search warrants (Rule 41, probable cause, a magistrate │ │ judge signs) · Title III wiretaps (AG-level approval, │ │ plus necessity) · pen registers · § 2703(d) orders │ │ GRAND JURY TOOLS ────────── subpoenas duces tecum and ad testificandum · immunity │ │ under 18 U.S.C. § 6002-6003 · secrecy under Rule 6(e) │ │ │ ◇ is the target notified? ─── generally NO. A target letter is discretionary and in │ │ most districts uncommon outside white-collar practice. │ └─▶ statute of limitations runs throughout: 5 years by default (18 U.S.C. § 3282), │ longer for specific offenses, none for capital offenses or most terrorism. │ ├─◆ 2. THE CHARGING DECISION ⚑⚑ (the most consequential stage, and it has no docket) │ │ │ │ ▣ THE SUPERVISION CHAIN │ │ Line AUSA ──▶ Section/Unit Chief ──▶ Criminal Chief ──▶ First Assistant ──▶ │ │ U.S. ATTORNEY (93 of them, across 94 judicial districts) │ │ └─▶ for sensitive categories, further up: the litigating Division at Main │ │ Justice ──▶ DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ──▶ ATTORNEY GENERAL │ │ │ │ ▣ JUSTICE MANUAL 9-27.000 - PRINCIPLES OF FEDERAL PROSECUTION │ │ 9-27.220 substantial federal interest + admissible evidence sufficient to │ │ obtain and sustain a conviction │ │ 9-27.230 adequacy of an alternative (state prosecution, civil, regulatory) │ │ 9-27.260 IMPERMISSIBLE considerations: political association, activities or │ │ beliefs; race; religion; sex; national origin │ │ [ By its own terms the Manual confers NO enforceable rights. A defendant cannot │ │ move to dismiss because it was ignored. It binds only if supervisors enforce it. ] │ │ │ │ ▣ PRIOR-APPROVAL CATEGORIES (a partial list; each routes above the district) │ │ public corruption and election offenses ...... Public Integrity Section │ │ RICO ......................................... Organized Crime and Gangs Section │ │ FCPA ......................................... Fraud Section │ │ national security and FARA ................... National Security Division │ │ subpoenas to members of the news media ....... Attorney General personally │ │ [ These are internal routing rules, revisable by memorandum, with no notice to │ │ Congress and no publication requirement when narrowed. ] │ │ │ ◇ charge, or decline? │ ├─▶ CHARGE ───────────────────▶ continue to stage 3 │ └─▶ DECLINE ✕ ── THE EXIT WITH NO RECORD. No filing, no docket number, no notice to │ the subject, no statistic published identifying the matter. Presumptively │ unreviewable under Heckler v. Chaney (1985). Selective- and vindictive- │ prosecution claims exist but United States v. Armstrong (1996) requires a │ threshold showing before discovery is even allowed, which is close to │ unobtainable when the comparator cases are the ones that were never filed. │ ├─◆ 3. THE GRAND JURY ⚑ (the only citizen check, and the one that almost never fires) │ 16-23 citizens · 12 votes to indict · no judge in the room · no rules of evidence · │ no defense counsel inside · target has no right to appear · Rule 6(e) secrecy │ ├─▶ TRUE BILL ──────────────▶ indictment returned, continue to stage 4 │ ├─▶ NO BILL ✕ ─── the matter ends unless re-presented, and the Justice Manual │ │ requires the responsible U.S. Attorney's approval to go again. │ └─▶ BYPASS ROUTES that skip this stage entirely: │ · INFORMATION — the defendant waives indictment, almost always as part of a │ negotiated plea. This is how a large share of white-collar cases are charged. │ · COMPLAINT + Rule 5 — an arrest first on a magistrate-signed complaint, with │ the indictment following within 30 days under the Speedy Trial Act. │ · MISDEMEANOR — no indictment required at all. │ [ FY2013 baseline: 5 no bills in 196,969 matters (BJS). 2025-26 saw an unusual │ cluster of federal no bills in politically sensitive matters. Both figures are │ carried here as reported; no rate is asserted for 2026, because none is published. ] │ ├─◆ 4. ARREST OR SUMMONS ──▶ INITIAL APPEARANCE ──▶ ARRAIGNMENT │ Rule 5 initial appearance before a magistrate judge, usually within 24-48 hours · │ appointment of counsel under the Criminal Justice Act · the detention decision │ ◇ detention or release? (Bail Reform Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3142) │ ├─▶ released on conditions ── the majority of defendants, but not of drug or │ │ immigration defendants │ └─▶ DETAINED PENDING TRIAL ── a rebuttable presumption of detention attaches to │ whole statutory categories. Detention is the single strongest predictor of │ pleading guilty, which is why this stage belongs on a map of charging outcomes │ and not merely on a map of custody. │ Arraignment: the indictment is read, a plea is entered (virtually always NOT GUILTY │ at this stage), and the Speedy Trial Act clocks start: 30 days arrest-to-indictment, │ 70 days indictment-to-trial. │ ├─◆ 5. DISCOVERY AND MOTIONS (asymmetric by design, and the clock stops here) │ GOVERNMENT MUST DISCLOSE ── Rule 16 materials · Brady exculpatory evidence · Giglio │ impeachment of its own witnesses · Jencks statements, │ which by statute need not come until after direct exam │ DEFENSE MUST DISCLOSE ────── far less: alibi, insanity, expert reciprocity │ NO DEPOSITIONS of witnesses, unlike every civil case in the same courthouse │ ◇ dispositive motions: to dismiss the indictment · to suppress · to sever · to │ compel · venue · vindictive or selective prosecution │ └─▶ every motion filed EXCLUDES time from the 70-day clock (18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)), │ as does any "ends of justice" continuance. A complex case can run years with │ the statutory clock never expiring. │ ├─◆ 6. THE PLEA ⚑⚑ (where 98 of every 100 cases actually end) │ │ Rule 11(c)(1)(A) charge bargain — counts dismissed or not filed │ │ Rule 11(c)(1)(B) recommendation — non-binding on the judge │ │ Rule 11(c)(1)(C) agreed sentence — binding if the judge accepts the agreement │ │ Plus: cooperation agreements, proffer ("queen for a day") letters, deferred and │ │ non-prosecution agreements (mostly corporate), and pretrial diversion. │ │ │ │ THE PRICE OF REFUSING ── not a rule, but the sum of ordinary mechanisms: │ │ · acceptance of responsibility (-2, or -3) is available only on a plea │ │ · a mandatory minimum count can be dropped, or never filed │ │ · the § 851 prior-conviction enhancement can be withheld, or filed │ │ · a § 5K1.1 cooperation departure requires the prosecutor's motion │ │ [ NACDL's 2018 study found the average post-trial sentence exceeded the average │ │ post-plea sentence by more than 3x across most primary offense categories. ] │ ├─▶ PLEA ACCEPTED ✕ ────────▶ straight to stage 8, sentencing │ └─▶ PLEA REJECTED / REFUSED ▶ stage 7, trial │ ├─◆ 7. TRIAL (rare enough to be a statistical outlier rather than the default) │ Jury of 12, unanimous · government bears proof beyond a reasonable doubt · Rule 29 │ motion for judgment of acquittal at the close of the government's case and again │ after the verdict │ ├─▶ ACQUITTAL ✕ ── final. The Double Jeopardy Clause bars any government appeal, │ │ which makes this the only truly unreviewable ending on the map. │ └─▶ CONVICTION ──▶ stage 8 │ [ Acquitted conduct may still raise the sentence at stage 8 under a preponderance │ standard. The Sentencing Commission narrowed this by amendment in 2024; it did │ not eliminate it. ] │ ├─◆ 8. SENTENCING (the judge decides; the Guidelines decide what the judge starts from) │ Presentence report by U.S. Probation ──▶ objections ──▶ Guidelines calculation: │ offense level (base + specific offense characteristics + adjustments) crossed with │ criminal history category, on the 43 x 6 table │ ──▶ departures and variances ──▶ the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors ──▶ sentence imposed │ Advisory since United States v. Booker (2005) — but the range must still be │ calculated correctly, treated as the starting point, and any variance explained well │ enough to survive reasonableness review. │ └─▶ MANDATORY MINIMUMS override the whole calculation where they apply. The only two │ exits are the § 3553(f) safety valve and a § 5K1.1 / Rule 35(b) cooperation │ motion, which only the prosecutor can file. The charging decision at stage 2 │ therefore sets the sentencing floor here, six stages earlier. │ ├─◆ 9. APPEAL AND COLLATERAL REVIEW │ DIRECT APPEAL ─── to the circuit (14 days to notice). Preserved issues reviewed for │ error; unpreserved ones for plain error. Most plea agreements │ contain an APPEAL WAIVER, which is generally enforced. │ ──▶ petition for certiorari ── discretionary, and granted in a vanishingly small │ fraction of federal criminal cases │ COLLATERAL ────── 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion (1-year limit, ineffective assistance and │ jurisdictional claims) · a second one requires circuit authorization │ COMPASSIONATE RELEASE ── 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), which the First Step Act let │ defendants file directly rather than only through the BOP │ └─▶ EXECUTIVE EXIT — the pardon or commutation, which is outside this pipeline │ entirely and reviewable by nothing in it. Mapped separately. │ └─◆ 10. THE SUPERVISION LAYER AS IT STANDS [ dated block — 16 September 2026 ] Attorney General ............................ Todd Blanche (sworn in 10 Aug 2026, 88th AG; previously Deputy AG from 2025, and Acting AG before confirmation) Acting Deputy Attorney General .............. Trent McCotter (since 10 Aug 2026) Assistant AG, Criminal Division ............. A. Tysen Duva (since Dec 2025) Solicitor General ........................... D. John Sauer (49th SG, since Apr 2025) U.S. Attorneys .............................. 93 offices, 94 judicial districts Sentencing Commission ....................... 5 of 7 seats filled; quorum is 4; two more terms expire at the end of 2026, putting the 2027 amendment cycle at risk. [ The Commission last lost its quorum in Dec 2018 and went ~5 years without adopting amendments. ] Live appointments question .................. 28 U.S.C. § 546 permits the AG ONE 120-day interim U.S. Attorney appointment; after it lapses the power passes to the district court and does not return. On that ground the EDVA indictments of James Comey and Letitia James were dismissed in Nov 2025, and the Fourth Circuit heard the government's appeal in Sep 2026. A December 2025 grand jury separately refused a new mortgage-fraud indictment of Letitia James. [ All six officeholder lines verified 16 Sep 2026 against justice.gov staff profiles. Commission seat count: USSC commissioners page and the 2026-2027 priorities notice. EDVA litigation posture: contemporaneous reporting, 15 Sep 2026; the appeal was argued and NOT decided as of this writing. ] ``` ## Notes - **Why stage 2 is the map.** Every other stage on this chart generates a record. A warrant application is docketed under seal; an indictment is filed; a plea is colloquied on the record; a sentence is explained in open court; an appeal produces an opinion. The charging decision produces nothing. A declination closes a matter with no filing, no number, no notice to the subject, and no published statistic identifying it. This is not an oversight — *Heckler v. Chaney* treats non-enforcement as presumptively committed to executive discretion precisely because courts have no manageable standard for reviewing an absence. The consequence is that the stage with the most discretion is the only one with no external check at all, and the only constraint on it is the [[Justice Manual]], which creates no rights and can be revised by memorandum. - **The two filters are substitutes, and only one of them was ever built for the job.** The grand jury's near-total deference is usually described as a failure of the institution. It is better read as a division of labor: the grand jury sees only cases the internal filter has already approved, so agreement is the expected outcome and the 0.003% no-bill rate reflects a screen upstream rather than a rubber stamp downstream. That reading has a testable implication, and 2025–26 tested it. When sensitive matters were routed around the internal screening, no-bills appeared in the one category where they had effectively never occurred. This is the load-bearing analytic claim on the page, and it is an inference from a pattern, not a measured finding — nobody publishes a current federal no-bill rate, and the cluster is small enough that it could be coincidence. It is offered as the structure the evidence suggests, with the evidence named. - **What actually stopped the two most prominent cases was none of the above.** The Comey and James indictments were dismissed in November 2025 because [[Lindsey Halligan]] had not been lawfully appointed: § 546 gives the Attorney General a single 120-day interim appointment, and the EDVA clock had expired 244 days earlier when she was installed. Judge Currie set aside every act flowing from the defective appointment, including the signing of the indictments. That is a check on the *top* of the supervision chain rather than on any stage of the pipeline, and it is worth being precise about what it did and did not decide: nothing about the evidence, nothing about the charging decision, and nothing about whether the cases could be brought again by someone properly appointed. The Fourth Circuit heard the government's appeal in September 2026 and had not ruled as of this writing; the map records the posture and asserts no outcome. The mechanics of that appointment are the subject of the queued **How a U.S. Attorney Is Appointed and Removed** map, which this one deliberately does not duplicate. - **The plea figure is a share of *sentenced* cases, not of all matters.** The 98% at stage 6 comes from the Sentencing Commission's FY2025 datafile, which counts the 66,662 individuals who reached sentencing. Cases dismissed before sentencing are not in the denominator, and — much more importantly — neither is anything that ended at stage 2, because those matters have no denominator to be in. The true share of federal *matters* that end in a guilty plea is unknowable for exactly the reason the second Note gives. Every number on this map is stated at the scope its compiler used, with the compiler named in the bracket beside it. - **What this map deliberately leaves open.** (1) Whether the 2025–26 no-bill cluster is a rate change or a small-numbers artifact — there is no published current baseline, and the FY2013 figure is the most recent clean one that could be verified. (2) Whether the Sentencing Commission will hold a quorum into 2027, which determines whether the Guidelines at stage 8 are a living instrument or a frozen one; the two expiring seats are a Senate calendar question, not a legal one. (3) Whether the § 546 holding survives the Fourth Circuit, and if it does, what it implies for other districts running on lapsed interim appointments — a question that reaches far past the two named cases and that no published count of affected districts currently answers. - **Officeholder verification.** Six current seats are named in stage 10; all six were verified on 16 September 2026 by web search against Department of Justice staff profiles, and the verification turned up a change this vault had not recorded: **[[Todd Blanche]] was confirmed as the 88th Attorney General on 8 August 2026 and sworn in on 10 August**, moving up from Deputy Attorney General, with **[[Trent McCotter]]** becoming Acting Deputy Attorney General the same day. Every figure, case name and date elsewhere on the map carries its source in the adjacent bracket. Nothing unconfirmed is asserted. ## See also - [[DOJ Component Tree]] — who the prosecutors are, and which component owns which approval - [[Federal Judiciary Tree]] — the courts this pipeline runs through - [[How an Emergency Stay Application Moves Through the Courts]] — the fast civil track, for contrast - [[The Pardon and Clemency Pipeline]] — the executive exit at stage 9, mapped in full - [[Immigration Removal Pipeline]] — the parallel non-criminal track, and the source of most federal criminal volume - [[Justice Manual]] · [[Prosecutorial Discretion]] · [[Grand Jury]] — the three concepts stage 2 and stage 3 turn on - [[Federal Sentencing Guidelines]] · [[United States Sentencing Commission]] · [[Trial Penalty]] — stage 8, and the price of stage 7 - [[Speedy Trial Act]] — the clocks started at stage 4 and stopped at stage 5 - [[Public Integrity Section]] · [[Weaponization Working Group]] — the approval layer, and the unit built beside it - [[Todd Blanche]] · [[Trent McCotter]] · [[D. John Sauer]] · [[Lindsey Halligan]] — the seats named in stage 10 - [[James Comey]] · [[Letitia James]] — the EDVA cases the appointments question arose in - [[How a U.S. Attorney Is Appointed and Removed]] — the appointments question mapped end to end: how the officer who signs the charging decision gets the chair, and what a defective appointment costs at stage 4 - [[Fifth Amendment]] · [[Sixth Amendment]] — the constitutional footing of stages 3, 5 and 7 - [[Department of Justice]] · [[Foundations Hub]] · [[Judiciary Hub]] · [[Federal Agencies Hub]]