Indictment - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition indictment

Definition :

Indictment [fr. indico, Lat., to show], a written accusation against one or more persons of a crime formerly preferred to and presented upon oath by a grand jury. Grand juries were partly abolished by the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Pro-visions) Act, 1933 (23 & 24 Geo. 5, c. 36). The bill of indictment is now preferred by any person before a court in which a person charged may lawfully be indicted, and the proper officer shall, if the requirements have been complied with, sign the bill and it shall thereupon become an indictment. But bills of indictment may be preferred before grand juries of the Counties of London and Middlesex by virtue of certain enactments set out in the 1st Schedule (high treason and certain other offences tribal in the King's Bench Division). Indictments were of a highly technical character until simplified by the Indictments Act, 1915, which directs that the particulars of the offence shall be 'set out in ordinary language.' See also Indictments Procedure Rules, S.R. & O., 1933, No. 745; Indictable Offences Rules, S.R. & O., 1933, No. 832.

Though it is usual to proceed before justices of the peace for commitment of the alleged offender to prison to await his trial at Assizes (see that title) or Quarter Sessions (see SESSIONS OF THE PEACE), or for his admission to bail (see that title), under the Indictable Offences Act, 1848 (11 & 12 Vict. c. 42), before preferring an indictment, it is not obligatory to do so, and s. 9 of the Act leaves it to the absolute discretion [which must be exercised, Reg. v. Adamson, (1875) 1 QBD 201] of the justices either to summon the alleged offender before them, or to leave the prosecutor to his remedy by indictment unsupported by the preliminary commitment or admission to bail.

Two prisoners separately indicted cannot be tried together, R. v. Crane, (1921) 2 AC 299; R. v. Dennis, 40 TLR 420.

Indictment de felonia est contra pacem domini regis, coronam et dignitatem suam, in genere et non in individuo; quia in Anglia non est interregnum. Jenk. Cent. 205.--(Indictment for felony is against the peace of our lord the king, his Crown and dignity in general, and not against his individual person; because in England there is no interregnum.)