Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Subject is the message.

Thanks!

Grand juries are secret.
My neighbor was on one once 30 years ago and the only thing she divulged to me after 20 years was that F. Lee Bailey was involved as council. She told me she had found out the night before serving and said she just had time to buy a new dress.(He used to practice in Florida..and she had a crush on him.)

There was some newspaper "coverage" at the time of Lizzie's (and turns out Trickey's too) Grand Jury proceeding but it is pretty much conjecture. No leaks...Secret. I don't think we can even trust the list of people called that was "published." It's a good question, tho.

That's what I thought might be the case.....pretty hard to imagine this is a permanent secret....but maybe it is.

I'll do a little googling.....

mass.gov/superior-court-rules/superior-court-rule-63-recording-of-grand-jury-proceedings
Rule 63
All testimony given before a grand jury shall be recorded by a court reporter appointed by a justice of the Superior Court, who shall be sworn, or recorded electronically by a method approved by the Trial Court. Unless otherwise ordered by the court, transcripts of the record of the testimony shall be furnished only as required by the district attorney or attorney general.


This rule was updated in 2020. No idea how long it has been in affect, but likely something similar has always existed. That said, this rule feels far less restrictive than client/lawyer privilege.

I'd like to get my eyes on the Grand Jury proceedings in the JonBenet Ramsey case!
There were rumors they wanted to indict!

One of the reasons we had hopes for a brief while that the Robinson archives on the Borden case would be opened was that those files would possibly contain a transcript of the Grand Jury. But in Swidler & Berlin v United States, it was ruled that attorney-client privilege continues even after the death of the client. That was the Vince Foster case that we hoped would free the Borden file. But nooooooooo............