Which of the 50 states use grand juries, which use preliminary hearings, which use both?

Question

For example, California uses both, but most criminal cases proceed by preliminary hearing. I am looking only for state procedures, not federal. The best answer would be a table sorted by state.

Answer 1

Most States use BOTH. The reason is due to the severity of the crime.

A PRELIMINARY hearing is usually held for a minor offense or misdemeanor charge, like petty theft, assault, minor drug offenses and the like.

The more serious Felony offences call for an INDICTMENT.
In order to INDICT a person on a serious charge, like Grand Theft, Extortion, Homicide, etc, the STATE MUST convene a GRAND JURY in order to hear the evidence and decide if there is enough to go through with a trial. After hearing the evidence, it is THE GRAND JURY who hands down the INDICTMENT bringing the accused to a trial by jury. In some cases, the GRAND JURY has found that there was not enough evidence to indict, and therefore the accused goes free, at least until enough evidence is amassed and another hearing is held.

Answer 2

All yet between the responses are ineffective because of fact the question replaced into approximately GRAND Jury accountability and the solutions utilized to pedit (trial) jury. Grand Juries determine if the prosecutor has sufficient info to bypass in front of a pedit jury and in straightforward terms require a majority to realize this. except the prosecutor is thoroughly inept a Grand Jury will supply the bypass forward for a pedit jury trial; subsequently the previous legal expert asserting that a Grand Jury might indite a ham sandwich.

Answer 3

I think that all use both in some form or another. It all depends upon what is to be tried in court to see if there is enough evidence for it to go higher or not. They are both investigations of a sort.

A Preliminary Hearing is mainly used in instances where a case can be brought to an end before it goes to court. Example: a divorce.
A Grand Jury is more of a fact finding mission than anything else. Examples: Enron, Iran-Contra, Watergate, the JFK Assasination, the McCarthy era.

Answer 4

Well in Pennsylvania there is no grand jury. All criminal cases go to a preliminary hearing in front of a district majistrate and if they proove prima facia evidence it goes to county court. I believe it's this way in every commonwealth