Definition
Indicted is the past tense and past participial form of "indict." A person is indicted when a grand jury has formally charged them with a criminal offense by returning a true bill — that is, finding sufficient evidence to believe the accused committed the crime and that the case should proceed to trial. Being indicted does not establish guilt; it establishes only that the grand jury found probable cause to charge.
The term is a status descriptor, not a substantive legal concept in its own right. Its full legal meaning flows from the underlying noun: an indictment is the formal written accusation issued by the grand jury; indicted is the condition of the accused once that accusation has been returned against them.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simple past and past participle of indict.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To indict meant to accuse formally, especially through the action of a grand jury.
The common and legal meanings are closely aligned in surface meaning, but popular usage introduces a significant distortion: in ordinary speech, "indicted" frequently carries the connotation of guilt or near-certainty of wrongdoing. In law, indictment is a threshold determination only — probable cause, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A researcher reading historical newspaper accounts or public records must be alert to this gap: a source describing someone as "indicted" tells you the procedural status, not the outcome.
Common Confusion
Indicted is frequently conflated with convicted, arrested, or charged more generally. These are distinct procedural postures:
Arrested: taken into custody, typically on probable cause; no formal accusation yet.
Charged: may refer to an indictment or to a criminal complaint or information filed by a prosecutor without grand jury action.
Indicted: specifically, charged through the grand jury process.
Convicted: found guilty at trial or by plea — a final adjudication.
In federal practice and in states that require grand jury indictment for felonies, being indicted is a constitutionally significant step. In states that permit prosecution by information (a prosecutor-filed charging document), a defendant may be "charged" with a felony without ever being indicted. A researcher who encounters "indicted" in a historical source should not assume the jurisdiction required grand jury process, nor assume the prosecution ultimately succeeded.
Why It Matters in Research
The research significance of indicted lies almost entirely in jurisdictional and temporal context.
Constitutionally, the Fifth Amendment requires grand jury indictment for federal felony prosecutions. This right has not been incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment — one of the rare Bill of Rights provisions that remains unincorporated — meaning states may and do prosecute felonies by information rather than indictment. A researcher working in state court records must determine whether that jurisdiction uses grand juries for the offense type and time period in question before treating "indicted" as a term with constitutional weight.
Historically, grand jury practice varied enormously. Colonial and early American grand juries exercised broad investigative independence. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, grand juries became increasingly prosecutor-guided, giving rise to the criticism that modern grand juries will indict on a prosecutor's direction. Historical sources from different eras may use "indicted" to describe processes that functioned very differently in practice.
For corpus researchers, indicted appears heavily in court records, criminal dockets, newspaper accounts, and legislative records investigating public officials. When tracking a person's legal history, indicted is a starting point, not an endpoint — always look for the disposition: acquitted, convicted, nolle prosequi, or case dismissed.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three historical dictionaries here are in complete agreement and are notably spare: Black's (both editions) defines indicted as "charged in an indictment with a criminal offense" and cross-references INDICTMENT. Bouvier's offers the equivalent formulation: "having had an indictment found against him."
This unanimity reflects the fact that indicted is, in dictionary terms, a derivative form — its work is done by the entry for indictment, where the historical sources diverge more instructively on matters of grand jury composition, the distinction between true bills and no bills, and the historical requirement of presentment. Researchers seeking the substantive doctrine should consult those entries rather than this one. What the historical dictionaries do not address — and what modern research requires — is the jurisdictional split on whether indictment is required at all, which developed more fully as states codified criminal procedure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Jurisdictional Note
The federal constitution requires grand jury indictment for capital and "otherwise infamous" federal crimes (Fifth Amendment). Most states do not require indictment and permit felony prosecution by information. Several states require indictment for capital offenses only. A handful of states have abolished the grand jury for most purposes entirely. The term "indicted" in a state court record therefore carries different procedural weight depending on jurisdiction and period.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Fifth Amendment — Grand Jury Indictment Clause (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia, constitutional_122)