I. Historical Basis

• Library: The Rights of the Accused under the Sixth Amendment (ABA) (2016 Ed.)

I. Historical Basis

The origins of our constitutional rules for place of prosecution reside in the Magna Carta, which states: "nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land."¹ The English colonists carried this right with them to North America in the form of a trial by a local jury, and the colonists reacted with anger to King George III when he and Parliament eliminated this right for treason charges in 1769.² The English government decided to bring colonists charged with treason to England for trial after colonists in the Massachusetts Bay Colony rebelled against taxes imposed on them by Parliament.³ The revolutionaries complained in the Declaration of Independence that the King "has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent of pretended Legislation: . . . [f]or transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses."⁴ The adoption of the Constitution in 1787 and the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791 formally established a "place of prosecution" right for U.S. citizens.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution states in part that "[t]he Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed."⁵ This venue provision provides a defendant with the right to be tried for a crime in the district where the crime allegedly occurred.⁶

The Sixth Amendment further established a vicinage⁷ right for the citizens of the new United States: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law."⁸ Because of limited travel in the early days of the United States, the vicinage requirement usually resulted in a jury selected from the district of the defendant's residence.⁹ In modern times, the vicinage provision guarantees a jury selected from the district in which the crime allegedly occurred.¹⁰

The distinction between these two similar provisions is that the venue provision requires that an offender be tried in the district in which the crime was committed, while the vicinage provision...