The grand jury is not required to hear evidence for the defendant, but it shall weigh all the evidence submitted to it, and when it has reason to believe that other evidence within its reach will explain away the charge, it shall order the evidence to be produced, and for that purpose may require the district attorney to issue process for the witnesses.
Cal. Penal Code § 939.7
Conduct of Investigations
Applied in 13 court decisions — leading case 7 Cal. 3d 710 - People v. Sirhan (1972)
Most recently applied in 140 Md. App. 540 - Clark v. State (September 2001)
Added by Stats. 1959, Ch. 501.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.