How grand juries work

By Katie Brinn

Two of the highest-profile cases this year ended without a verdict of “guilty” or “innocent.” In fact, the cases of Officers Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., and Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, N.Y., didn’t make it to trial at all.

In both cases, the police officers killed unarmed black man while on duty, and in both cases, a grand jury decided that no criminal charges should be filed against them.

The decisions, handed down within two weeks of each other, ignited outrage across the country and around the world.

But we’ll never know how the grand juries came to their decisions. That’s because what happens in the grand jury room stays in the grand jury room. All the deliberations are strictly secret, and though the prosecutor can sometimes release some evidence to the public, it’s a crime for a grand juror to talk about any of the proceedings.

So what really goes on behind those closed doors? To find out, watch the video above. Then when it comes to the grand jury process, you can say, “Now I get it.”