Like the mythical Bigfoot, grand jury “final orders” have been described (in statute), but, to date, have only once been “seen.” Yet, not unlike the infamous 1960s film that may or may not depict Bigfoot, we may have recently caught a glimpse of another grainy image of a final order. Indeed, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued its opinion in In re Grand Jury Investigation No. 18 (Petition of C.S.), No. 18 MM 2019 (Pa. Jan. 22, 2020), it spent time in (big) footnote six telling us that such orders may yet be real.

Let us explain. The appeal in Grand Jury Investigation No. 18 was initiated by a petition for review from an order of the supervising judge of a county investigating grand jury in which the judge largely overruled various objections to a then-forthcoming grand jury report. The order was noted by the Supreme Court to be not “technically” final because it gave the petitioner 20 days to submit a final response to the grand jury report. The court further observed the petitioner appealed before submitting any such response and that the supervising judge then never entered a final order. The Supreme Court decided to hear the case nevertheless, in the interest of judicial efficiency.