II. Venue

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

II. VenueA. Distinguished from Jurisdiction

A federal district court has jurisdiction over a criminal case when either (1) the crime occurred on federal land or (2) the Constitution grants federal jurisdiction over a criminal act, thereby making the crime a federal crime.¹⁴ By contrast, venue dictates which specific federal court will hear the case, and the proper district, for venue purposes, is always determined by a district judge.

B. In General

Proper venue is determined by the nature of the crime and the location of the alleged act.¹⁵ Unless Congress has provided a venue provision in the statute, the government generally must prosecute a crime in the district in which the alleged offense was committed,¹⁶ the locus delicti,¹⁷ as opposed to the location of the defendant.¹⁸ In performing the inquiry into the locus delicti, "a court must initially identify the conduct constituting the offense (the nature of the crime) and then discern the location of the commission of the criminal acts."¹⁹ The leading case is United States v. Cabrales, where the Supreme Court concluded that venue in Missouri was not proper for a money-laundering conspiracy charge.²⁰ Although the alleged drug sale took place there, the government could not prove that an agreement or any other part of the money-laundering crime with which the defendant was charged occurred in Missouri.²¹ As in Cabrales, venue has traditionally been used to protect defendants from the burden of being forced to mount a defense in an inconvenient district unless the crimes were actually committed in that district.²²

C. State Practice

The Sixth Amendment vicinage provision applies to all criminal prosecutions. Nearly five decades ago, the Supreme Court held that a state statute preventing a defendant from requesting a change of venue, even for a misdemeanor trial, was unconstitutional under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.²³

States vary on the treatment of venue...