Hurtado v. California
The Supreme Court upheld California's practice of charging a man with murder through a prosecutor's information rather than a grand jury indictment, ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause does not require states to use grand juries in criminal cases.
The decision established that due process protects basic fairness and settled legal procedure rather than requiring every specific procedure found in English common law, giving states broad room to design their own criminal procedures as long as they remain fundamentally fair.
“It follows that any legal proceeding enforced by public authority, whether sanctioned by age and custom, or newly devised in the discretion of the legislative power, in furtherance of the general public good, which regards and preserves these principles of liberty and justice, must be held to be due process of law.”
The Court's general test for what counts as due process of law.
How it got here: California's courts, relying on their own precedent, upheld the information procedure; Hurtado brought a writ of error to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Joseph Hurtado was charged with murder in California and sentenced to death after being prosecuted not by grand jury indictment but by an "information" — a formal accusation filed directly by the local district attorney following a magistrate's preliminary examination. Hurtado argued that skipping the grand jury violated his constitutional right to due process of law, since English and early American legal tradition treated grand jury indictment as essential in serious criminal cases.
The question before the Court
Does the Constitution require states to use a grand jury indictment, rather than a prosecutor's information, before trying someone for a crime that could bring the death penalty?
Why it matters
The ruling let California and other states prosecute serious and even capital crimes without convening a grand jury, so long as some other fair process — like a preliminary hearing before a magistrate — was used instead. It shaped how courts have since decided which specific criminal-procedure rights the Constitution forces states to follow, a question that still matters for how state courts run criminal cases today.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, so Hurtado's conviction and death sentence stood. The ruling itself did not require any further proceedings on the due-process question, though the broader legal debate about which specific criminal-procedure protections apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment continued for decades afterward and was addressed piecemeal in later cases.
What this does not decide
The Court did not hold that states may adopt any criminal procedure they like; it emphasized that due process still requires protection of fundamental principles of liberty and justice. It also did not address whether other specific Bill of Rights guarantees, such as jury trial rights, are required of the states.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Harlan
“It may be safely affirmed that, when that Amendment was adopted, a criminal prosecution, by information, for a crime involving life, was not permitted in any one of the States composing the Union.”Harlan's argument that grand jury indictment for capital crimes was a nationally recognized fundamental right.
Justice Harlan argued that due process of law, as historically understood in England and adopted by the American colonies and states, absolutely forbade prosecuting someone for a capital offense without a grand jury indictment. He noted that virtually every state's constitution, in force when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, either expressly or impliedly required grand jury indictment for capital crimes, showing it was a fundamental principle of liberty and justice. He warned that the majority's reasoning could logically be extended to allow states to eliminate petit juries in capital cases entirely, tried before a single judge or justice of the peace, which he considered an alarming result.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court framed the central legal question as whether 'due process of law' in the Fourteenth Amendment locks in place the specific historical procedures of English common law, including grand jury indictment, or instead protects only the underlying principles of fair and regular legal process.
- Examining Magna Charta and Lord Coke's commentary, the Court concluded that the phrase 'law of the land' was never meant to freeze one particular procedure in place; historical practice showed informations (charges filed by a prosecutor rather than a grand jury) were long accepted for many offenses under English law.
- The Court applied a structural argument from the Constitution's own text: because the Fifth Amendment separately and specifically guarantees grand jury indictment for federal capital and infamous crimes, while also containing its own due process clause, the due process clause itself cannot already include a grand jury requirement — otherwise the specific grand jury clause would be redundant.
- Reasoning by parity, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, using the same words, likewise does not itself require a grand jury; if the framers had wanted to impose that specific requirement on the states, they would have said so explicitly, as they did for the federal government in the Fifth Amendment.
- The Court articulated a general due process test: any legal procedure — old or newly devised by a legislature — is due process of law so long as it preserves fundamental principles of liberty and justice, rather than being arbitrary or a special rule aimed at a particular person or case.
- Applying that test to California's information procedure, which included a magistrate's preliminary examination, a determination of probable guilt, the right to counsel, and cross-examination of witnesses before a full judicial trial, the Court concluded the procedure adequately protected the defendant's substantial rights and therefore satisfied due process.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Company (18 How. 272)
The Court read this earlier case as showing settled usage can prove something is due process, not as requiring settled usage for anything to qualify.
Distinguishes Jones v. Robbins (8 Gray 329)
The Court declined to follow this Massachusetts decision's view that grand jury indictment was essential to due process.