Cite as: 510 U. S. 266 (1994)
Stevens, J., dissenting
early Massachusetts case, Chief Justice Shaw described it as follows:
"The right of individual citizens to be secure from an open and public accusation of crime, and from the trouble, expense and anxiety of a public trial, before a probable cause is established by the presentment and indictment of a grand jury, in case of high offences, is justly regarded as one of the securities to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive public prosecutions, and as one of the ancient immunities and privileges of English liberty." Jones v. Robbins, 74 Mass. 329, 344 (1857).
Moreover, most of the Courts of Appeals have treated claims of prosecutions without probable cause as within "the ambit of compensability under the general rule of 42 U. S. C. § 1983 liability," see ante, at 289-290 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment). See, e. g., Golino v. New Haven, 950 F. 2d 864, 866-867 (CA2 1991) (and case cited therein), cert. denied, 505 U. S. 1221 (1992); Robinson v. Maruffi, 895 F. 2d 649, 654-657 (CA10 1990) (citing cases); Torres v. Superintendent of Police of Puerto Rico, 893 F. 2d 404, 408 (CA1 1990) (citing cases, and finding cause of action if "egregious"); Goodwin v. Metts, 885 F. 2d 157, 162 (CA4 1989) (citing cases), cert. denied, 494 U. S. 1081 (1990); Rose v. Bartle, 871 F. 2d 331, 348-349 (CA3 1989) (citing cases); Strength v. Hubert, 854 F. 2d 421 (CA11 1988); Wheeler v. Cosden Oil & Chemical Co., 734 F. 2d 254 (CA5 1984).
Given the abundance of precedent in the Courts of Appeals, the vintage of the liberty interest at stake, and the fact that the Fifth Amendment categorically forbids the Federal Government from initiating a felony prosecution without presentment to a grand jury, it is quite wrong to characterize petitioner's claim as an invitation to enter unchartered territory. On the contrary, the claim is manifestly of constitutional dimension.
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