February 26, 2014 2:25PM # Is the Grand Jury System a Joke? By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) --- SHARE An excerpt from the *[Charlotte Observer](http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/02/01/4656417/officer-kerricks-indictment-reveals.html#.Uw4-HI2YaUk)*: > During a single four-hour workday last week, a Mecklenburg County grand jury heard 276 cases and handed down 276 indictments. > > > That means the 18 jurors heard evidence, asked questions, weighed whether the charges merit a trial, then voted on the indictments – all at the average rate of one case every 52 seconds.… > > > “The entire system is a joke,” said Joe Cheshire, a Raleigh attorney who handles high-profile criminal cases across the state. “There is absolutely no living, breathing person with any kind of intellect who believes that a grand jury could consider and vote on 10 complex issues in the period of time that they use to deliberate on hundreds.” > > > Charlotte attorney Jim Cooney agrees. Rather than check the power of government, grand juries have become a prosecutor’s ally, he said, “that hands out indictments like they’re boxes of popcorn.” The article notes that the one recent case where a grand jury *declined* to issue an indictment involved a police officer. Hmm. For Cato scholarship on the problems with the grand jury system, go [here](https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/grand-facade-how-grand-jury-was-captured-government). ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).