[travmatt]

To me, arguing grand juries should work in public just signals a poor understanding of the American legal system - in the purpose of grand juries, the intent behind their design, and what they actually do. Arguing that we need to remove protection against over-zealous prosecutors to make the system safer is pretty nonsensical to me.

[einpoklum]

The thing is, both secret and public grand juries (or similar constructs) can be and are manipulated by governments and over-zealous prosecutors specifically. Except that the manipulation uses different means.

[travmatt]

There’s no such thing as a public grand jury in America. Grand juries are undoubtedly biased towards prosecutors, since defendants have no role in a grand jury. A grand jury decides whether there is sufficient evidence of a crime to allow prosecutors to formally charge someone with a crime, where they then would have a trial with their opportunity to present a defense. Giving prosecutors a public platform to investigate people and associate them with crimes, even if they don’t plan to formally accuse them of such crimes, is quite literally arguing for an authoritarian society. I’m being charitable and assuming that the people who are asking for this actually want free societies and are quite ignorant, and aren’t actually advocates of authoritarian government.