I recently served on a New York grand jury and in my experience the biggest problem was that in 38/40 cases we only heard one side of the story. There were two

I recently served on a New York grand jury and in my experience the biggest problem was that in 38/40 cases we only heard one side of the story. There were two cases where the defendants testified. Like the other cases, the story of the other witnesses (often cops, sometimes civilians, sometimes some of each) was quite straightforward... until the defendant testified. It may have been in the defendants' best interest to "muddy the waters" as much as possible, but in both cases we obtained impartial evidence (video, 3rd party records) that corroborated parts of the defendants' stories and conflicted with those of the police officers. (There were other parts of the story where the reverse was true too). In both cases once we heart the defendant's side we needed additional evidence, beyond what the DA had initially provided, for us to be able to decide on whether or not to indict. Wo some cases it is hard to imagine there being another side (somebody is accused of selling drugs to an under cover cop or there's video of somebody committing the crime), but it makes me wonder if how many of the others were less straightforward than they seemed.