Hamilton County Grand Jury Duty Comes With a Four-Legged Perk: Basil the Therapy Dog

For most people, a jury summons is not a welcome piece of mail. But in Hamilton County, one form of jury service comes with an unexpected companion: Basil, a therapy dog who pads through the prosecutor’s office alongside detectives and attorneys.

With a mop of white fur, a seemingly permanent grin and a small vest bearing his name, Basil is hard to miss. He is also part of a grand jury process that looks very little like the courtroom dramas familiar to television viewers.

Grand jurors do not meet in a courtroom, and they are not asked to decide whether someone is guilty. Instead, they are drawn from voter-registration and driver’s license records and, in Hamilton County, meet nearly every weekday to review criminal cases.

There are other practical benefits. During a typical two-week term, grand jurors avoid the courthouse’s often lengthy security lines.

So what is a grand jury, and how does it differ from the trial juries most people know? About half of U.S. states use grand juries to determine whether enough evidence exists to charge someone with a crime.

In Ohio, grand juries handle serious felonies rather than minor offenses. In Hamilton County, they consider all felonies and any misdemeanors tied to a felony charge. They do not determine guilt or innocence, and they do not hear from the accused person or the accused person’s lawyer. They can, however, question police officers and others who come to present evidence.

According to the Ohio Judicial Council, the directive is to “determine if the evidence is sufficiently reliable or credible to determine that the person to be charged probably committed that offense.” The word “probably” matters: it is the foundation of the legal standard known as probable cause.

In Hamilton County, a grand juror serves for two weeks and may hear 100 cases or more during that time. If seven of the nine members hearing a case decide there is enough evidence to indict, the case proceeds. If there are not enough votes, the case is dropped. Court officials may call that a “no bill” or say the grand jury “ignored” the case. Prosecutors can bring a case back to a grand jury if new evidence emerges.

The grand jury rooms sit in the same building as the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office on Ninth Street, just a block from the courthouse. They lack the high ceilings and airiness of a courtroom and can feel cramped. But Kate Burroughs, chief of grand juries and intake since January 2025, has worked to refresh them.

Her daughters volunteered to help clean and update the rooms. They patched well-worn chairs, tables were brought in where there had been none, and a TV monitor was added. Burroughs said detectives in the past often had to walk around the room holding up their phones so jurors could see videos and photos.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich said grand juries convene Monday through Friday, except for some holidays, 52 weeks a year. Some Ohio counties hold grand juries less frequently because of lower population. But Hamilton County’s volume means two grand jury panels of nine jurors, plus alternates, work every weekday. Pillich said more than 5,700 cases were presented to Hamilton County grand juries in 2025.

That volume makes the grand jury less an occasional civic chore than a near-daily feature of Hamilton County justice. And because grand jurors decide whether charges move forward, their work shapes which cases reach court—and which ones end before trial.

The pace shows. The wood-paneled walls bear deep wear from the backs of chairs rubbing against them for hours, day after day, for decades.

It is in these rooms that grand juries perform one of the justice system’s most important gatekeeping functions. On the first day, jurors receive a presentation on basic legal principles: what terms such as knowingly, recklessly and possession mean, and what gun laws are active in Ohio. Burroughs explained that jurors get a lighter docket that day to find their footing before moving on to bigger cases.

“You don’t have any theatrics,” Pillich said.

Drug trafficking and possession cases make up the largest share of the workload, about 35% of all cases that go before grand juries, she said.

All grand jurors take a permanent oath of secrecy, promising never to share what they see and hear. The Ohio Supreme Court says that secrecy has several advantages, though it is also one of the chief criticisms of the grand jury system.

Because the point of a grand jury is to act as a check on whether a person should be charged, secrecy can protect the reputations of people who ultimately are not charged. The Ohio Supreme Court also says secrecy may encourage reluctant witnesses to testify and can keep a suspect from learning about an investigation and fleeing.

Problems arise when grand juries decline to indict a police officer or public official. Since the grand jury process is operated by the prosecution, critics argue prosecutors can shape their presentation to influence the outcome.

The grand jury tradition came to the United States from England, which stopped using grand juries in 1933. States that do not use them rely instead on preliminary public hearings before a judge. Replacing the grand jury system in Ohio would require amending the state constitution.

For many jurors, the experience is surprising and emotionally taxing, Burroughs said. Most people are not regularly exposed to the level of trauma discussed in the jury room. Jurors routinely view crime-scene photographs and hear testimony involving shootings, sexual offenses and other violent crimes.

When the prosecutor’s office brought in Basil, the assumption was that the therapy dog would mostly help crime victims and their families. Pillich quickly found that grand jurors appreciated him just as much. His presence is a small but telling acknowledgment of the toll the work can take.

Despite the difficult material, many jurors come away with a deeper appreciation for the role they play in the criminal justice system, she said. In surveys, jurors reported learning what is really happening in their community. Some said they changed where they give their time and money. One described the experience as the greatest they had ever had.

Burroughs said jurors also form real connections with one another. She knows of one group that meets quarterly for brunch.

“Can we do this as a career?” one juror wrote in a post-service survey.

Unfortunately, no, Burroughs said. Grand juries do not even accept volunteers.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: This Hamilton County jury assignment comes with Basil the dog