ATLANTA — Fulton County's district attorney, Fani Willis, made headlines on Thursday with her request for a special grand jury as she investigates former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia.
That distinction in there - special grand jury versus just convening a regular grand jury to present the case - raises some questions about the legal process in Georgia and how Willis is going about her investigation.
11Alive turned to legal analyst and attorney Page Pate to explain what the request for a special grand jury will mean.
What is a special grand jury?
"Special grand juries were established by Georgia law to handle the more complicated cases, in other words if the case is going to take a long time to investigate, if the DA's office is going to want to have many witnesses testify, they want to subpoena documents - something that’s going to be more complicated and more time-consuming than a regular grand jury that’s hearing all the routine cases may be able to handle.
"There’s a way to do it under Georgia law. If you want a special grand jury the DA goes to the chief judge of the county and then the judge agrees or doesn’t agree to empanel a special grand jury, usually limited to one case and that’s what's happened in this situation."
How is a special grand jury different from a regular grand jury?
"Some of it us up to the judge and the way the special grand jury is set up. Generally the big difference between a special grand jury and a regular grand jury, aside from the fact a special grand jury is usually just focusing on one case, is the time.
"A special grand jury can meet as long as they need to, whereas a regular grand jury will only meet for one term of court - usually like a day a week until they hear all the cases.
"A special grand jury’s a lot more flexible than that. They could meet for a block of time for several months, they could also meet one day a week for several months, really all depends on how the judge sets it up and how the DA wants to use that grand jury."
Why would a DA want a special grand jury?
"She could subpoena witnesses to a regular grand jury and she could also use either a regular grand jury or a special grand jury to subpoena documents. Emails, phone records, bank records, that sort of thing. Either grand jury can do that, but it’s easier for a special grand jury to focus on one case if the DA thinks it's going to take a long time.
"In other words you only have a certain block of time in front of a regular grand jury and if you’re not ready to go with all of your witnesses and all of your documents in that little block of time, they’re not going to be able to properly consider the case. Special grand jury gives you a lot more flexibility - I’ll call two witnesses in today, I’m not going to be able to get to the other two until next month, I need to subpoena some documents the other side may object. So it just gives you a lot more flexibility with time, but either grand jury can hear testimony of witnesses, you don’t need a special one to do that."
What does the Fulton County DA's request tell us about where her investigation of Trump is at?
"Normally if you’re investigating a complicated or lengthy case, you’re going to ask for this special grand jury at the beginning of the investigation. We know in this case that the district attorney announced the criminal investigation about a year ago and has presumably been reaching out to witnesses and gathering documents, so what this suggests to me is we’re not at the beginning of this investigation but she’s reached some dead ends and is using a special grand jury just to complete the investigation.
"The other thing that’s critically important is that a special grand jury cannot indict anyone. All they can do is make recommendations so at the end of their service we would anticipate that they would recommend either charging or not charging certain individuals, including former President Trump, and then the DA would have to go to one of her regular grand juries to actually get any indictments."