An indicted criminal defendant has no constitutional right to challenge the government’s pretrial freezing of assets needed to hire a lawyer, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
“If judicial review of the grand jury’s probable cause determination is not warranted (as we have so often held) to put a defendant on trial or place her in custody, then neither is it needed to freeze her property,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a 6-3 majority. “The grand jury that is good enough— reliable enough, protective enough—to inflict those other grave consequences through its probable cause findings must needs be adequate to impose this one too.
