Grand Jury Efforts: Jailing Chelsea Manning

http://dissidentvoice.org/2019/03/grand-jury-efforts-jailing-chelsea-manning/
Date Written:  2019-03-12
Publisher:  Dissident Voice
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23553

The role of Grand Juries in the persecution of Chelsea Manning and a summary of their history.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The sense of dredging and re-dredging in efforts to ensnare Manning is palpable. She insists that she had shared all that she knew at her court-martial, a point made clear by the extensive if convoluted nature of the prosecution's effort to build a case. "The grand jury’s questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I tesified [sic] for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous testimony." Before Friday’s hearing, she also reiterated that she had invoked the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment protections.

Grand juries have gone musty. Conceived in 12th century England as a feudalistic guardian against unfair prosecution, they became bodies of self-regulating and policing freemen (often barons with a gripe) charged with investigating alleged wrongdoing. Doing so provided a preliminary step in recommending whether the accused needed to go court. The US Constitution retains this element with the Fifth Amendment: that no "person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury."