Definition
A criminal information is a formal charging document filed by a prosecutor — typically an attorney general, district attorney, or other authorized government officer — that initiates a criminal prosecution without prior action by a grand jury. It performs the same function as an indictment (setting out the charges against an accused person) but bypasses the grand jury screening process entirely.
The information must specify the offense charged with enough particularity to notify the defendant of what they must defend against and to protect against double jeopardy by establishing a record of the prosecution. In modern American practice, criminal informations are the standard charging instrument for misdemeanors and many felonies in jurisdictions that do not constitutionally require grand jury indictment for the charges at issue.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Information" in ordinary English refers broadly to facts, data, or knowledge communicated or received. In casual usage, the word carries no procedural or accusatory meaning.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines "information" as "the act of informing, or of communicating knowledge or intelligence" and secondarily as "a formal accusation of a crime, presented to a court." The secondary meaning acknowledged the legal usage, but without distinguishing its procedural significance.
The gap matters: A researcher encountering the word "information" in historical legal records may not immediately recognize it as a charging instrument equivalent in function to an indictment. The legal term is a term of art describing a specific procedural mechanism — not merely the communication of facts to a court. Failing to recognize this distinction can cause researchers to misread historical prosecution records or conflate informations with other documents such as complaints, presentments, or affidavits.
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Common Confusion
Criminal information is frequently confused with:
INDICTMENT: Both are formal charging documents that initiate criminal proceedings. The critical difference is origin — an indictment issues from a grand jury after its independent review of evidence; a criminal information issues directly from the prosecutor. In federal felony prosecutions, the Fifth Amendment generally requires indictment. In states and for lesser offenses, information is commonly available.
COMPLAINT: A complaint is typically the threshold document used to initiate arrest or set a case in motion before a charging decision is made. A criminal information is the formal pleading that officially charges the defendant and frames the prosecution. Researchers should not treat these as interchangeable in historical records.
PRESENTMENT: A presentment is a grand jury's own initiative report of a suspected crime, distinct from an indictment (which responds to evidence presented by the prosecutor) and from an information (which bypasses the grand jury entirely).
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Why It Matters in Research
Several research traps arise with this term.
Constitutional threshold: The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires grand jury indictment for federal capital or "infamous" crimes. This means criminal information is constitutionally unavailable as the charging instrument in certain federal felony prosecutions. Researchers working on federal criminal cases must track whether the charge proceeded by indictment or information, as proceeding by information for a crime requiring indictment is a structural defect. This constitutional limitation does not apply to states through incorporation — most states permit felony prosecutions by information with waiver or without restriction.
Waiver dynamics: In jurisdictions that permit both instruments, a defendant can often waive grand jury review and consent to prosecution by information. Historical records may reflect this waiver. Researchers analyzing whether constitutional protections were preserved or surrendered must distinguish voluntary waivers from situations where information was simply the standard instrument used.
English law origins complicate historical sources: Pre-19th century English legal sources treat criminal informations as a distinctive and somewhat extraordinary Crown proceeding — the sources in the historical dictionary entries here reference Blackstone's Commentaries Book IV and Cole's treatise on criminal informations specifically. In the English tradition, informations filed by the Crown's law officers (ex officio informations) carried particular political significance, including use in seditious libel prosecutions. American researchers applying English common law materials must adjust for this context, since American practice normalized the information as a routine prosecutorial instrument in ways that English practice did not.
Corpus connections: This term connects directly to grand jury procedure, the Fifth Amendment indictment clause, prosecutorial charging discretion, and double jeopardy protections. Researchers who find criminal informations in historical court records should also examine what charging alternatives were available in that jurisdiction and era, since the choice between indictment and information often reflects institutional design choices, not just prosecutorial preference.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill all converge on the same core definition: a criminal proceeding brought by the proper officer of the state or Crown without prior grand jury interposition. All three cite Blackstone's Commentaries (4 Bl. Comm. 398) as the foundational authority, and Black's and Bouvier's additionally cite Cole's treatise on criminal informations — a work that provided the most detailed early treatment of the instrument in Anglo-American law.
Burrill usefully adds the phrase "at the suit of the king," which captures the English law framing and signals that the historical sources are primarily describing Crown practice rather than American prosecutorial procedure. This is worth flagging: the historical dictionary entries describe the concept in its English common law posture. They do not address the American constitutional dimension — the Fifth Amendment indictment requirement, the states' varying approaches, or the modern routine use of information for misdemeanor and felony charging alike.
Rapalje & Lawrence offer no independent definition, cross-referencing without elaboration — a known limitation of that source for procedural terms that had already stabilized in doctrine by the time of its compilation.
The historical sources, taken together, are reliable for the definitional core but insufficient for American constitutional analysis. Researchers should treat them as the starting point, not the endpoint.
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Jurisdictional Note
Federal practice requires grand jury indictment for infamous crimes under the Fifth Amendment; criminal information is not available to charge federal felonies over that threshold without constitutional waiver issues. In state practice, the majority of U.S. jurisdictions permit felony prosecutions by information either freely or upon defendant's waiver of grand jury rights. A handful of states — including California and Texas — use the information as the primary felony charging instrument. Researchers must always verify the applicable state constitutional provision, as some state constitutions provide grand jury rights that exceed the federal floor.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia — Sixth Amendment: Right to Be Informed of Charges (criminal_185)
Note: The tax and employment encyclopedia entries matched to this term (tax_113; employment_143) are not relevant to criminal information as a charging instrument and are omitted.
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