Grands juries generally approve the indictment. At the and DC, they repel.

As the saying says, a large jury would be a ham sandwich. But in some jurisdictions selected in recent months, this saying has proven to be false.

In federal cases for crime, prosecutors must obtain an indictment of a large jury before officially invoicing someone. But the process is so unilateral – only the prosecutor can present evidence and call witnesses during the secret procedure, and the prosecutor can call several major juries in the same case within 30 days – that a large jury refusing to unravel is practically unknown.

However, in two cities where the Trump administration has deployed a strong application of the federal law and a military presence, claiming that it wanted to repress violent crimes and immigration offenses, federal prosecutors have not succeeded in obtaining an unusually high number of accusation of the Grand Jury.

The warnings abound. The procedures of the great jury are secret, it is therefore unknown why some cases have resulted in non-bill (a refusal to instill). The two cities, Washington and Los Angeles, are considered to be democratic bastions where majority anti-top jury basins are likely. And, this trend is always minor: the documented refusals to unravel in the two cities are still in numbers with figures. But even a non-bill is very rare.

During the 2010 financial year, the major federal juries refused to issue indictment in only 11 cases, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. So that two cities almost correspond to this number in a few months is notable and recalls that the citizens themselves are key actors in the American judicial system.

“It seems to me that the great jurors find their voice,” explains Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.