The prescribed constitutional function of grand juries in federal courts 4 is to return criminal indictments, but the juries serve a considerably broader series of purposes as well. Principal among these is the investigative function, which is served through the fact that grand juries may summon witnesses by process and compel testimony and the production of evidence generally. Operating in secret, under the direction but not control of a prosecutor, not bound by many evidentiary and constitutional restrictions, such juries may examine witnesses in the absence of their counsel and without informing them of the object of the investigation or the place of the witnesses in it. 5 The exclusionary rule is inapplicable in grand jury proceedings, with the result that a witness called before a grand jury may be questioned on the basis of knowledge obtained through the use of illegally-seized evidence. 6 In thus allowing the use of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, the Court nonetheless restated the principle that, while free of many rules of evidence that bind trial courts, grand juries are not unrestrained by constitutional consideration. 7 A witness called before a grand jury is not entitled to be informed that he may be indicted for the offense under inquiry 8 and the commission of per jury by a witness before the grand jury is punishable, irrespective of the nature of the warning given him when he appears and regardless of the fact that he may already be a putative defendant when he is called. 9
Of greater significance were two cases in which the Court held the Fourth Amendment to be inapplicable to grand jury subpoenas requiring named parties to give voice exemplars and handwriting samples to the grand jury for identification purposes. 10 According to the Court, the issue turned upon a two-tiered analysis--''whether either the initial compulsion of the person to appear before the grand jury, or the subsequent directive to make a voice recording is an unreasonable 'seizure' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.'' 11 First, a subpoena to appear was held not to be a seizure, because it entailed significantly less social and personal affront than did an arrest or an investigative stop, and because every citizen has an obligation, which may be onerous at times, to appear and give whatever aid he may to a grand jury. 12 Second, the directive to make a voice recording or to produce handwriting samples did not bring the Fourth Amendment into play because no one has any expectation of privacy in the characteristics of either his voice or his handwriting. 13 Inasmuch as the Fourth Amendment was inapplicable, there was no necessity for the government to make a preliminary showing of the reasonableness of the grand jury requests.
Besides indictments, grand juries may also issue reports which may indicate nonindictable misbehavior, mis- or malfeasance of public officers, or other objectionable conduct. 14 Despite the vast power of grand juries, there is little in the way of judicial or legislative response designed to impose some supervisory restrictions on them. 15
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A person can be tried only upon the indictment as found by the grand jury, and especially upon its language found in the charging part of the instrument. 28 A change in the indictment that does not narrow its scope deprives the court of the power to try the accused. 29 While additions to offenses alleged in an indictment are prohibited, the Court has now ruled that it is permissible ''to drop from an indictment those allegations that are unnecessary to an offense that is clearly contained within it,'' as, e.g., a lesser included offense. 30 There being no constitutional requirement that an indictment be presented by a grand jury in a body, an indictment delivered by the foreman in the absence of other grand jurors is valid. 31 If valid on its face, an indictment returned by a legally constituted, non-biased grand jury satisfies the requirement of the Fifth Amendment and is enough to call for a trial on the merits; it is not open to challenge on the ground that there was inadequate or incompetent evidence before the grand jury. 32
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/01.html
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