The intervention of a grand jury is also often the necessary cause of a delay alike prejudicial to the State and to the prisoner. It can only be called in when a court is in session, by which it can be instructed as to its duties and to which it is to report its doings. Months often elapse in every year when no such court is in session. For this reason, in case of a poor man under arrest on a charge of crime, who cannot furnish bail, it would often be much better for him were his liability to be brought to trial to be settled promptly by a single examining magistrate. At the hearing in that case also he has a right to be present and to be heard. Before a grand jury he has no such right. In most States, the great majority of indictments are against those who have already been committed on a magistrate's warrant to answer to the charge, should an indictment be found. The accused thus has two chances of escape before he can be put on trial for the charge against him: one by a discharge ordered by the committing magistrate, and one by the refusal of the grand jury to return "a true bill." A grand jury is more apt to throw out a charge as groundless than a single magistrate. He feels the full weight of undivided responsibility. If he err by discharging the prisoner, he knows that it may let a guilty man go free, untried. If he err by committing him for trial, he knows that, if innocent, the jury are quite sure to acquit him. He acts also in public. The whole community knows or may know the proofs before him, and will hold him to account accordingly. On the other hand, in the grand jury room all is secret. The prosecuting attorney, if admitted, does not remain while the jurors are deliberating over their decision. No one outside knows who may vote for and who against the return of an indictment. Every opportunity is thus afforded for personal friendship for the accused or business connection with him to have its influence. Judges know this, and in their charge often emphasize the importance and gravity of the duty to be performed. In 1903, the prosecuting officer in one of the small counties in Kentucky had prepared indictments against several men of some local prominence for arson and bribery. A special grand jury was summoned to act upon them. There was reason to expect some reluctance on the part of several. Of the witnesses for the State some were no less reluctant. There was great public excitement in the court town. One witness came there over ninety miles by rail hidden, for fear of his life, in a closed chest in the car of an express company. The grand jury were told by the court that they must make their inquiry a thorough one and indict without fear or favor every person in the county who ought to be indicted. "If," the judge added, "the evidence calls for indictments and you don't make them, they will be made anyway. If you do not do your full duty, I will do mine by assembling another grand jury." They did theirs under these stirring