Is there evidence that grand juries in the United States ever practiced a form of jury nullification due to bad behavior by the executive branch?

Question

The United States legal system includes many checks and balances; one such check that lies in the hands of the people is the requirement that federal prosecutors obtain indictments from a grand jury prior to charging someone with a federal felony (ref).

In theory a grand jury could decide that, due to perceived bad behavior by the Executive Branch or the Department of Justice specifically, no possible evidence presented by the prosecutor could be sufficient for an indictment. This would essentially be a form of "jury nullification" practiced by a grand jury.

Is there any evidence that this kind of behavior by a grand jury has occurred in the United States?

To be clear:

• I'm asking if there is evidence of this kind of thing; historical evidence like diaries/letters, statements to the media, records of deliberations, etc. could all be considered evidence. Of course, not all of this might be admissible evidence, but I am talking about evidence from a legal-history perspective.
• Evidence that a grand jury ruled due to a specific fact or belief related to the case before them doesn't count. For example, if a grand jury felt that a witness or a prosecutor acted unethically and returned no-bill due to that perceived breach of ethics, then that does not count. If that same grand jury found no specific problem with the case but returned no-bill due to a lack of trust in the ethics of the relevant US Attorney's Office or the DOJ, that would count.

Notably, the wikipedia page for jury nullification currently mentions a single case involving a grand jury: "In 1681, a grand jury refused to indict the Earl of Shaftesbury." This was not in the United States, and the nullification appears to be due to specific facts of the case not a general lack of trust in the government, based on the wikipedia page for the Earl of Shaftesbury. The wikipedia page on US Jury Nullification currently lists no examples of grand jury nullification.

Answer 1

As others have noted above, the secrecy of grand jury proceedings and the absence of written explanations for their decisions makes it rather difficult to answer this question.

However, my recollection is that Alexander Hamilton credited jury nullification—or something like it—for the failure to indict John Peter Zenger, and that similar forces were suspected to be at work in the refusal to indict numerous defendants in the Whiskey Rebellion.

As I understand it, grand juries were far more independent in colonial times, and further back into English history, and that this sort of thing was fairly common. They were expected to be an independent check against overzealous prosecutors, but they have largely lost that function now.