I am often asked by clients who’ve been arrested for a felony, “what is the process? What’s a grand jury? What does all that mean?” And, very often it’s actually not the client who asks that question because the client has been arrested for a felony, they’re in jail and it’s the family who are concerned with what’s going to happen next.
The first thing that happens when you’re arrested for a felony is you’re arraigned usually in the local criminal court. So that’s the lower court. In Suffolk County it’s in Central Islip. So you’re going to be arraigned on what’s called the felony complaint.
The first thing that’s going to happen after the arraignment if the judge sets bail on you and you’re in custody is that case is going to be assigned to an assistant district attorney who’s going to make a decision about how they want to initially prosecute the case, to formally charge you with a felony. Formal meaning now that the case can proceed to trial.
They have to present the case to a grand jury and they typically have six days if there’s an intervening weekend, they’re going to have six days within which to do that. It’s a very important time.
It’s crucial that the family hire an attorney to represent that person because one of the first things we’re going to do after arraignment is contact the assistant who’s assigned to that case and try to dissuade them from presenting the case to the grand jury because if they don’t present, then if your client can’t post bail he will actually be released when that case comes back to court, within six days.
The grand jury is a body that hears evidence presented just by the district attorney, not by your lawyer. And they make a determination whether a felony was committed, and if so, whether your client committed the felony, or the crime. Misdemeanors can also be presented to a grand jury.
If they don’t present it to a grand jury and they don’t get an indictment when the case comes back to court, the person can be released. If they do present the case to a grand jury and they certify that to the judge on the next court date, that person will be held until an arraignment on an indictment, and that could take a few days.
So the grand jury that’s an important part of the procedure and initially the most important thing is to hire a lawyer because that lawyer is going to talk to the D.A. about whether they’re going to put the case into the grand jury, whether they should, is there other evidence that you as the lawyer is aware of that they could look into. So you’re best served by hiring a lawyer right away for the arraignment and then to talk to the D.A. before they get to the grand jury.
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