[7] The justice of the peace then is required to review the information and determine if process should issue under the Criminal Code for the arrest of the individual.
If the preliminary inquiry judge rules that the Crown prosecutor has satisfied this standard, the Court commits the accused to stand trial.
A criminal information was a proceeding in the King's Bench Division of the High Court brought at the suit of the Crown without a previous indictment.
[10] Criminal informations other than those filed ex officio by the Attorney General were abolished by section 12 of the Administration of Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1938.
Thus, the information has always been the dominant charging document in the western states, where extremely dispersed population distribution during the American frontier era made it difficult to select and convene petit juries to hold trials.
In eastern states and in federal courts, the prosecutor seeks to obtain an indictment from a grand jury, or strikes a plea bargain with the defendant, as part of which the defendant waives his right to be indicted, and then files an information as part of the process of reducing the plea bargain to judgment.
If the magistrate finds probable cause, the district attorney files an information, which supersedes the complaint and becomes the operative pleading against the defendant through trial, verdict, and judgment.