Grand juries, at the federal level, almost always vote to indict people accused by the prosecutor

[bigtree]

_____ Grand juries, at least at the federal level, almost always vote to indict people accused by prosecutors of a crime. As you can see in the chart (below), federal prosecutors pursued over 160,000 cases against defendants in 2009-2010 (the last period for which there is data), and grand juries only voted not to return an indictment in 11. Prosecutors decided not to pursue charges in thousands of cases for a host of other reasons, such as weak evidence or other authorities were pursuing the case.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/24/the-single-chart-that-shows-that-grand-juries-indict-99-99-percent-of-the-time/?utm_term=.c0376ce172cd

[leftstreet]

1. DURec

Prosecutors don't like to lose!

[procon]

2. Who will win the first indictment? nt

[PearliePoo2]

3. There is NO one better than Robert Mueller.

He knows what he's doing, he's NOT fucking around. He's a Patriot and for him and all the professionals on his team, this will be their finest hour! Godspeed good ladies and gentlemen!

[progressoid]

4. rec!

[cynatnite]

5. The evidence is usually that strong. n/t

[GopherGal]

6. From Wikipedia

Generally speaking, a grand jury may issue an indictment for a crime, also known as a "true bill," only if it finds, based upon the evidence that has been presented to it, that there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed by a criminal suspect.

So the evidentiary standard for issuing an indictment is not that high.
Also, in the grand jury, only the prosecutors present evidence. There's no exculpatory evidence presented at this stage.

[cynatnite]

7. You're right and I should have clarified...

However, in the federal grand jury I served on, they walked in with pretty overwhelming evidence most of the time. There was once when we felt it was lacking and we didn't vote to indict.

Also, we were well aware that an indictment didn't equal conviction.

[GopherGal]

10. Right

I think it's a combo of a couple things:
Because the stakes are lower (issuing an indictment, not determination of guilt), there's a lower bar for evidence required to get an indictment, and exculpatory evidence not presented.
Prosecutors don't generally proceed to that step until they're fairly confident that they can meet that (lower) standard.

I think we at DU seem a little prone to getting overexcited every time things come out, so I'm being a bit of a killjoy in trying to get across that this doesn't mean they've got an open-and-shut case for conviction. At this point the grand juries tell us they apparently think they've got "probable cause" to get subpoenas and indictments.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. The Land Where Ham Sandwiches Fear to Tread

[boston bean]

9. Unless it is cops who shoot black people dead.