This column discusses amendments to the Pennsylvania grand jury procedure recommended by the grand jury task force, and amendments to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury statute, recommended by the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (PACDL). The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has the jurisdiction to amend the grand jury procedure and the Pennsylvania Senate has the power to amend the grand jury statute. These changes are long overdue and have been the subject of many articles in this paper for several years.

A grand jury task force was created in late 2017 by the Supreme Court to address problems in the state grand jury process. The task force issued its report in November 2019. The task force report discussed several problems with the present grand jury procedure. Significant problems were noted in the procedure for training the supervising grand jury judges and the court procedure followed by the supervising grand jury judges. Members of the task force were surprised by the comments of judges themselves about the need for changes. I discussed the proposed changes in my columns of March 9, 2020, and July 12, 2021. Many of the recommendations are not radical, but commonsense good practices, such as the need for a grand jury practice manual for judges and jurors, specific training for grand jury judges, and the need for law clerks for the judges.

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