On its first day, the newly re-launched TruTV “In Session” is broadcasting live coverage of the trial of a Florida man, Juan Mendez, Jr.,  for the second-degree murder of his estranged wife and mother-in-law in 2006.

• Sidebar: Much as I would like to supply you with a link to an In Session blog article about the trial, it appears that TruTV has not made a smooth transition from New York to Georgia. Neither does CNN’s streaming video include coverage of the trial, but fortunately the Fort Myers news-press.com does (full, live streaming video).

TruTV’s Jean Casarez reported today that the reason this particularly gruesome murder wasn’t charged as a capital crime is that the grand jury refused to indict Mr. Mendez because the DNA evidence was unclear. As a result, the state’s attorney had to charge him with a lesser crime, second-degree murder, which does not require an indictment in Florida.

This is an interesting fact, is it not? It raises several questions for me. For one thing, lawyers like to say that prosecutors control grand juries and could probably “indict a ham sandwich.” So, this grand jury’s justifiable (IMHO) insistence on good DNA evidence must be an unusual occurrence. It would be interesting to know how often this happens.

Another question is, how many states have the same rules that Florida has concerning indictments? According to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “infamous” crimes require a grand-jury indictment. But a quick Google search indicated to me that many jurisdictions rely on preliminary hearings rather than grand juries.

I immediately wondered about California and the Scott Peterson case: was Peterson indicted by a grand jury (when I compare the Peterson and Mendez cases, you will see why I wonder about this). I found a copy of the Peterson indictment online, so I assume he must have been.

This surprises me, because frankly there was no evidence (even presented in the trial) that Peterson had premeditated the murder (first-degree) or that he had even accidentally killed his wife in their home. (I don’t think Peterson’s purchase of a boat prior to the homicide is evidence of premeditation—all it shows is that he was a fisherman. And I don’t think a wrinkled kitchen rug and an indentation in a duvet cover is proof that he killed his wife in their home.)

Yet a California grand jury must have indicted Peterson for first-degree murder on this evidence, while a Florida grand jury refused to indict a man who was under a restraining order to stay away from the wife he brutally abused—and who stabbed and slashed his wife and her mother to death so violently that their home was awash in their blood and the knives he used were bent and broken.