Definition
A bill of indictment is the formal written accusation of a crime presented to a grand jury for its consideration. It names one or more accused persons and sets out the charge — whether felony or misdemeanor — with sufficient specificity to inform the accused of what they are charged with and to allow the grand jury to evaluate whether the charge is supported by probable cause.
The bill of indictment is the instrument; the indictment is the result. When twelve or more grand jurors find the accusation supported by sufficient evidence, they endorse the document with the words "a true bill," and the bill of indictment becomes an indictment — the formal charge on which the accused stands trial. When the grand jury finds the charge unsupported, they return "not a true bill" or "no true bill," and the accusation fails. Historically, the rejection was marked with the Latin "Ignoramus" (we do not know), though this form is now obsolete.
Common Confusion
Bill of indictment and indictment are related but not synonymous. The bill of indictment is the accusatory document laid before the grand jury — a proposed charge. The indictment is what the bill becomes after the grand jury endorses it as a true bill. In casual legal usage and in many historical sources, the terms are used interchangeably, which can obscure whether a writer is referring to the pre-deliberation document or the post-endorsement charge. Researchers reading older treatises and case law should treat context carefully: a reference to a "bill" in criminal proceedings may denote the document at any stage, whereas a reference to an "indictment" more precisely denotes the charge that has survived grand jury scrutiny.
A separate source of confusion is the relationship between a bill of indictment and a criminal information. An information is a formal accusation filed directly by a prosecutor without grand jury involvement. In federal felony prosecutions, a grand jury indictment is constitutionally required; an information cannot substitute. At the state level, many jurisdictions permit informations for felonies. Historical sources do not always make this distinction clearly.
Why It Matters in Research
The bill of indictment is procedurally central to felony prosecution in the federal system and in many state systems, making it a recurring subject in constitutional, criminal procedure, and grand jury materials across the Law Mind corpus.
Several navigational points matter:
First, terminology shifts across centuries. Early English and colonial American sources use "bill" as the primary term; "indictment" increasingly displaces it as the dominant term from the nineteenth century onward. Searching only for "indictment" in early materials may cause researchers to miss relevant passages framed around "bill."
Second, the grand jury's endorsement language — "true bill," "no true bill," "Ignoramus," "billa vera" — appears in varying forms across historical sources. Burrill's citation to Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 302, 305, 306) is a reliable anchor for the classical common law framework, including the Latin forms. Researchers tracing the historical vocabulary of grand jury practice should use Burrill as an entry point into those primary sources.
Third, the constitutional dimension creates a significant jurisdictional divergence that is easy to underestimate. The Fifth Amendment's Grand Jury Clause — which requires indictment for capital or infamous federal crimes — has never been incorporated against the states. This means that in state court research, bill of indictment materials may describe a process that has been substantially modified or replaced by information practice. See constitutional_59 for the incorporation background.
Fourth, researchers examining the Rapalje & Lawrence entry should note that it redirects to the general BILL and INDICTMENT entries rather than providing a standalone definition. This cross-reference structure is characteristic of Rapalje & Lawrence and signals that the dictionary treats the compound term as fully defined by its components. Researchers should not interpret the redirect as an indication that the concept was legally unimportant — it was not; Rapalje & Lawrence simply organized their coverage differently.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in substantive agreement on the core definition: a bill of indictment is a written criminal accusation presented to a grand jury, which either endorses it as a true bill or rejects it. This is one of the more stable definitions across the historical dictionary record.
Bouvier and Burrill both preserve the archaic "Ignoramus" return and situate the procedure within English common law practice, reflecting the pre-twentieth-century world in which American criminal procedure was still closely tied to its English origins. Burrill's reference to Blackstone's Commentaries and Stephen's Commentaries gives this entry its historical grounding and is the most scholastically anchored of the four.
Black's definition is the most procedurally economical and reflects the practitioner-facing orientation of that dictionary. It specifies both felonies and misdemeanors, as does Bouvier.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the constitutional entrenchment of grand jury indictment in federal felony cases, the non-incorporation of that requirement, or the twentieth-century expansion of information practice in state systems. Researchers using these dictionaries alone will see a procedural device that appears universal and unremarkable; the constitutional and jurisdictional complexity requires modern supplementation.
Jurisdictional Note
The Fifth Amendment requires a grand jury indictment for capital or otherwise infamous federal crimes, making the bill of indictment constitutionally significant in federal criminal practice. This requirement does not apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Many states have moved substantially toward information practice for felony charges, and some have abolished or significantly curtailed the grand jury requirement. State-level research on indictment procedure requires jurisdiction-specific analysis.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
constitutional_122: The Fifth Amendment — Grand Jury Indictment Clause (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)
constitutional_59: Incorporation of the Bill of Rights Against the States (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)