Committal procedure
replacement of earlier grand jury process except in US
In law, a committal procedure is the process by which a defendant is charged with a serious offence under the criminal justice systems of all common law jurisdictions except the United States; which, instead, retains the earlier grand jury process.
Sometimes the committal procedure includes a preliminary hearing, sometimes it does not.
In most jurisdictions criminal offences fall into one of three groups:
There are less serious (summary) offences which are usually heard without a jury by a magistrate. These are roughly equivalent to the older category of misdemeanors (terminology that is now obsolete in most non-U.S. jurisdictions).
There are intermediate offences which are indictable (equivalent to an old-style felony), but which can be heard summarily. For instance, theft is usually a serious offence. If however the charge is that the defendant stole a packet of biscuits worth only a very small amount, it would probably be heard by a magistrate. In Canada and Ireland, these are known as hybrid offences, whereas in England and Wales, these are known as either way offences, and can only be heard summarily with the defendant's consent and if a magistrates' court finds that matter is suitable for summary trial. In Victoria, Australia, they are called indictable offences triable summarily. As well as the defendant's consent the Magistrate must regard the offence as appropriate to be heard in the lower court.
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This entry incorporates text from “Committal procedure” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.