An 82-year-old researcher who has spent decades searching for an answer to the disappearance of a critic of former Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that district courts have inherent authority to release grand jury materials, a decision that could spill over into Congress' quest to obtain grand jury evidence from the special counsel.

Stuart McKeever has been seeking a limited release of grand jury materials from the more than 60-year-old criminal prosecution of a former FBI agent believed to have been involved in the vanishing of Columbia University professor Jesus de Galindez from New York City in 1956.

On appeal, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in April that district courts lack inherent authority to disclose grand jury materials outside the terms of Federal Criminal Procedure Rule 6(e). Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg, joined by Judge Gregory Katsas, wrote that district courts are limited to the exceptions to grand jury secrecy listed in Rule 6(e).