About half of states require a grand jury to screen criminal indictments. Your suggestion seems to be to coalesce the grand jury with the petit jury, and have

About half of states require a grand jury to screen criminal indictments. Your suggestion seems to be to coalesce the grand jury with the petit jury, and have the jury decide first that a criminal court should convene to conduct a trial, and then decide only later if the facts proved in that trial correspond to any particular crime or crimes. The prosecutors could still press for a specific crime, but the defense would also be able to argue directly to the jury that "even if X and Y were true (which they aren't), that would only be a class N crime, because the prosecution hasn't proved Z, which is necessary for it to be a class M crime."