Definition
Indictable describes either an offense or a person that is properly or necessarily subject to prosecution by indictment — that is, by formal written accusation issued by a grand jury. When applied to an offense, it means the crime is of a class that must, or may, be prosecuted through the grand jury process rather than by information or other charging instrument. When applied to a person, it means that individual is legally subject to being charged by indictment for a particular act.
The term operates as a threshold descriptor in criminal procedure: it identifies which wrongs and which persons fall within the scope of the grand jury's charging power.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Subjecting one to an indictment (of an act); able or deserving to be indicted (of a person).
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Capable of being, or liable to be, indicted; subject to indictment; as, an indictable offender or offense.
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned here, but the common usage lacks procedural precision. In ordinary speech, "indictable" often functions informally — implying that someone deserves to be charged, or that conduct seems criminal — without any necessary reference to whether a grand jury is the required mechanism. In legal usage, the term is procedurally specific: an offense is indictable because law or constitutional requirement directs that it must be pursued by grand jury process, not merely because it seems serious or blameworthy.
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Common Confusion
Indictable is sometimes loosely used as a synonym for "criminal" or "serious," as if it merely signals severity. This is imprecise. An offense can be serious without being indictable in the technical sense (for example, misdemeanors prosecuted by information), and in some jurisdictions the category of indictable offenses is defined by statute with specific procedural consequences. The distinction between offenses that are indictable as of right versus those where indictment is optional (versus those where indictment is constitutionally required) matters substantially in both research and practice.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "indictable" most often in two contexts: constitutional analysis of the Fifth Amendment's Grand Jury Clause, and comparative criminal procedure — particularly British and Commonwealth sources.
In U.S. constitutional law, the relevant question is whether a particular offense is an "infamous crime" requiring grand jury indictment under the Fifth Amendment. Federal courts have developed a body of doctrine around which crimes cross that threshold. The term "indictable" in older American sources often tracks this analysis implicitly, even when the constitutional framework is not spelled out.
In British and Commonwealth materials, "indictable offense" carries a formal statutory meaning that divides criminal offenses into categories — indictable, summary, and (in England and Wales) either-way offenses — with different procedural tracks. Researchers using 19th-century English treatises or older Commonwealth case law will find "indictable" doing significant structural work in distinguishing the jurisdiction and procedure of different courts. This classification system has no direct American counterpart, and importing these distinctions uncritically into U.S. legal analysis is a common error.
Historical American sources, particularly pre-20th century treatises and court opinions, sometimes use "indictable offense" as a near-synonym for "felony," reflecting the era when felonies were consistently prosecuted by grand jury. That equivalence is not reliable in modern usage, where the felony/misdemeanor line and the indictment requirement do not map onto each other precisely in all jurisdictions.
Corpus researchers should also note that the procedural reform debates of the late 19th and early 20th centuries — which expanded prosecution by information as an alternative to indictment — affect how the term functions in sources from that transitional period. An author writing in 1890 may use "indictable" to describe a narrower or broader category than an author writing in 1930 would, even in the same jurisdiction.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical sources are in close agreement, and uniformly terse. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) offers identical one-line definitions: "proper or necessary to be prosecuted by process of indictment." Bouvier's adds modest texture, distinguishing between indictable as applied to a person ("an indictable offender") and indictable as applied to the offense itself ("an indictable offence"), and noting that the offense formulation means the matter "forms a subject or ground of indictment."
The historical sources share a significant gap: none explains what makes an offense indictable rather than otherwise, which was in practice determined by a combination of constitutional text, common law tradition, and statutory classification. Researchers relying solely on these definitions will need to supplement them with substantive doctrine — the definitions describe the label but not the criteria for applying it. Bouvier's citation to "Encyc. Dict." is not a legal authority and adds little.
Webster's 1913 and the historical legal dictionaries converge almost exactly in language, which reflects that the common English meaning of the word had, by the 19th century, been substantially shaped by legal usage.
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Jurisdictional Note
The Fifth Amendment's Grand Jury Clause has not been incorporated against the states, meaning state criminal procedure is not constitutionally required to use grand jury indictment. Many states permit or require prosecution by information for a wide range of serious offenses. What counts as "indictable" therefore varies considerably by jurisdiction, and the term may have a statutory definition in some states that controls its procedural significance.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Fifth Amendment — Grand Jury Indictment Clause (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia) — directly addresses the constitutional framework that determines which federal offenses require grand jury indictment, and provides essential context for understanding when and why "indictable" carries constitutional weight.
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