What part of the Sixth Amendment suggests accused?

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, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Annotations

When the Jury Trial Guarantee Applies.—The Sixth Amendment is phrased in terms of “all criminal prosecutions,” but the Court has always excluded petty offenses from the guarantee to a jury trial in federal courts, defining the line between petty and serious offenses either by the maximum punishment available or by the nature of the offense. This line has been adhered to in the application of the Sixth Amendment to the states, and the Court has now held “that no offense can be deemed ‘petty’ for purposes of the right to trial by jury where imprisonment for more than six months is authorized.” A defendant who is prosecuted in a single proceeding for multiple petty offenses, however, does not have a constitutional right to a jury trial, even if the aggregate of sentences authorized for the offense exceeds six months.

The Court has also made some changes in the meaning of the term “criminal proceeding.” Previously, the term had been applied only to situations in which a person has been accused of an offense by information or presentment. Thus, a civil action to collect statutory penalties and punitive damages, because not technically criminal, has been held not to implicate the right to jury trial. Subsequently, however, the Court focused its analysis on the character of the sanction to be imposed, holding that punitive sanctions may not be imposed without adhering to the guarantees of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. There is, however, no constitutional right to a jury trial in juvenile proceedings, at least in state systems and probably in the federal system as well.

In a long line of cases, the Court had held that no constitutional right to jury trial existed in trials of criminal contempt. In Bloom v. Illinois, however, the Court announced that “[o]ur deliberations have convinced us . . . that serious contempts are so nearly like other serious crimes that they are subject to the jury trial provisions of the Constitution . . . and that the traditional rule is constitutionally infirm insofar as it permits other than petty contempts to be tried without honoring a demand for a jury trial.” The Court has consistently held, however, that a jury is not required for purposes of determining whether a defendant is insane or mentally retarded and consequently not eligible for the death penalty.

Within the context of a criminal trial, what factual issues are submitted to the jury was traditionally determined by whether the fact to be established is an element of a crime or instead is a sentencing factor. Under this approach, the right to a jury had extended to the finding of all facts establishing the elements of a crime, but sentencing factors could be evaluated by a judge. Evaluating the issue primarily under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the Court initially deferred to Congress and the states on this issue, allowing them broad leeway in determining which facts are elements of a crime and which are sentencing factors.

Breaking with this tradition, however, the Court in Apprendi v. New Jersey held that a sentencing factor cannot be used to increase the maximum penalty imposed for the underlying crime. “The relevant inquiry is one not of form, but of effect.” Apprendi had been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for no more than ten years, but had been sentenced to 12 years based on a judge’s findings, by a preponderance of the evidence, that enhancement grounds existed under the state’s hate crimes law. “[A]ny fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum,” the Court concluded, “must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” The one exception Apprendi recognized was for sentencing enhancements based on recidivism. In Alleyne v. United States, the Court extended Apprendi to require “that any fact that increases the mandatory minimum [sentence] . . . must be submitted to the jury.”

Apprendi’s importance soon became evident as the Court applied its reasoning in other situations to strike down state or federal laws on Sixth Amendment grounds. In Ring v. Arizona, the Court applied Apprendi to invalidate an Arizona law that authorized imposition of the death penalty only if the judge made a factual determination as to the existence of any of several aggravating factors. Although Arizona had required that the judge’s findings as to aggravating factors be made beyond a reasonable doubt, and not merely by a preponderance of the evidence, the Court held that the findings must be made by a jury. Similarly, in Hurst v. Florida, the Court applied Apprendi, as well as the precedent of Ring, to invalidate a Florida statute authorizing a “hybrid” proceeding in which the “jury renders an advisory verdict[,] but the judge makes the ultimate sentencing determination[. ]” According to the Court, such proceedings run afoul of the Sixth Amendment because the judge, not the jury, makes the findings of fact that result in the imposition of the death penalty.

In Blakely v. Washington, the Court applied Apprendi to cast doubt on types of widely adopted reform measures that were intended to foster more consistent sentencing practices. Blakely, who pled guilty to an offense for which the “standard range” under the Washington State’s sentencing law was 49 to 53 months, was sentenced to 90 months based on the judge’s determination—not derived from facts admitted in the guilty plea—that the offense had been committed with “deliberate cruelty,” a basis for an “upward departure” under the statute. The 90-month sentence conformed to statutory limits, but the Court made “clear . . . that the ‘statutory maximum’ for Apprendi purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant. In other words, the relevant ‘statutory maximum’ is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but the maximum he may impose without any additional findings.”

Then, in United States v. Booker, the Court held that the same principles limit sentences that courts may impose under the federal Sentencing Guidelines. As the Court restated the principle in Booker, “[a]ny fact (other than a prior conviction) which is necessary to support a sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the facts established by a plea of guilty or a jury verdict must be admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.” Attempts to distinguish Blakely were rejected. The Court concluded that the fact that the Guidelines were developed by the Sentencing Commission rather than by Congress “lacks constitutional significance.” Instead, the Guidelines were suspect in application because, on the one hand, they curtailed the role of jury factfinding in determining the upper range of a sentence and, on the other hand, they mandated sentences from which a court could depart only in a limited number of cases and after separately finding the existence of factors not presented to the jury. The mandatory nature of the Guidelines was also important to the Court’s formulation of a remedy. Rather than engrafting a jury trial requirement onto the Sentencing Reform Act, under which the Guidelines were adopted, the Court instead invalidated two of its provisions, one making application of the Guidelines mandatory, and, concomitantly, one requiring de novo review for appeals of departures from the mandatory Guidelines, and held that the remainder of the Act could remain intact. As the Court explained, this remedy “makes the Guidelines effectively advisory. It requires a sentencing court to consider Guidelines ranges, but it permits the court to tailor the sentence in light of other statutory concerns as well.”

In Cunningham v. California, the Court addressed whether California’s determinate state sentencing law, yet another style of legislative effort intended to regularize criminal sentencing, sursubject ing rules, required that the trial judge in the case sentence the defendant to 12 years in prison unless the judge found one or more additional “circumstances in aggravation,” in which case the sentence would be 16 years. Aggravating circumstances could include specific factual findings made by a judge under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in apparent violation of Booker and Blakely. The court was also free to consider “additional criteria reasonably related to the decision being made.” The state argued that this latter provision conformed the California sentencing scheme to Booker, which contemplated that judges retain discretion to select a specific sentence within a statutory range, subject to appellate review to determine “reasonableness.” The Court rejected this argument, finding that the scheme impermissibly allocated sole authority to judges to find the facts that permitted imposition of a higher alternative sentence.

The Court, however, has refused to extend Apprendi to a judge’s decision to impose sentences for discrete crimes consecutively rather than concurrently. The Court explained that, when a defendant has been convicted of multiple offenses, each involving discrete sentencing prescriptions, the states apply various rules regarding whether a judge may impose the sentences consecutively or concurrently. The Court held that “twin considerations—historical practice and respect for state sovereignty—counsel against extending Apprendi‘s rule” to preclude judicial fact-finding in this situation, as well.

In Rita v. United States, the Court upheld the application, by federal courts of appeals, of the presumption “that a sentence imposed within a properly calculated United States Sentencing Guidelines range is a reasonable sentence.” Even if the presumption “increases the likelihood that the judge, not the jury, will find ‘sentencing facts,’” the Court wrote, it “does not violate the Sixth Amendment. This Court’s Sixth Amendment cases do not automatically forbid a sentencing court to take account of factual matters not determined by a jury and to increase the sentence in consequence. Nor do they prohibit the sentencing judge from taking account of the Sentencing Commission’s factual findings or recommended sentences. . . . The Sixth Amendment question, the Court has said, is whether the law forbids a judge to increase a defendant’s sentence unless the judge finds facts that the jury did not find (and the offender did not concede). . . . A nonbinding appellate presumption that a Guidelines sentence is reasonable does not require the judge to impose that sentence. Still less does it forbid the sentencing judge from imposing a sentence higher than the Guidelines provide for the jury-determined facts standing alone.”

In United States v. Gall, the Court held that, “while the extent of the difference between a particular sentence and the recommended Guidelines range is surely relevant, courts of appeals must review all sentences—whether inside, just outside, or significantly outside the Guidelines range—under a deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” The Court rejected “an appellate rule that requires ‘extraordinary’ circumstances to justify a sentence outside the Guidelines range,” and also rejected “the use of a rigid mathematical formula that uses the percentage of a departure as the standard for determining the strength of the justifications required for a specific sentence.” These approaches, the Court said, “come too close to creating an impermissible presumption of unreasonableness for sentences outside the Guidelines range.”

Subsequently, in Spears v. United States, the Court, emphasizing that the Guidelines “are advisory only,” clarified “that district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the . . . Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines.” In Spears, a district court had given a defendant a sentence significantly below the Guidelines for distribution of crack cocaine, noting that the Guidelines required 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger a particular sentencing range. The Supreme Court held that, if a sentencing court believes “that the 100-to-1 ratio embodied in the sentencing guidelines for the treatment of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine creates ‘an unwarranted disparity within the meaning of [18 U. S. C. ] § 3553(a),’” then it may vary downward from the Guidelines even when the particular defendant “presents no special mitigating circumstances” to justify a lower sentence.

The Booker line of cases addresses the role of the Sentencing Guidelines in imposing and reviewing individual sentences. Booker, however, did not overturn the Sentencing Reform Act in its entirety, nor did it abolish the Guidelines themselves. One set of provisions left intact directed the Sentencing Commission to review the Guidelines periodically, authorized it to reduce the Guidelines range for individual offenses and make the reduced ranges retroactive, but also generally foreclosed a court from then reducing a sentence previously imposed to one less than the minimum contained in the amended Guideline range. In Dillon v. United States, the Court distinguished this sentence modification process from a sentencing or resentencing, and upheld mandatory limits on judicial reductions of sentences under it.

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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, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Annotations

The requirement of an impartial jury is secured not only by the Sixth Amendment, which is as applicable to the states as to the Federal Government, but also by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and perhaps by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In addition, the Court’s has directed its supervisory power over the federal system to the issue. Even before the Court extended the right to a jury trial to state courts, it was firmly established that, if a state chose to provide juries, the juries had to be impartial.

Impartiality is a two-fold requirement. First, “the selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.” This requirement applies only to jury panels or venires from which petit juries are chosen, and not to the composition of the petit juries themselves. “In order to establish a prima facie violation of the fair-cross-section requirement, the defendant must show (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a ‘distinctive’ group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.” Further, once a plaintiff demonstrates a prima facie violation, the defendant faces a formidable burden: the jury selection process may be sustained under the Sixth Amendment only if those aspects of the process that result in the disproportionate exclusion of a distinctive group, such as exemption criteria, “manifestly and primarily” advance a “significant state interest.” Thus, in one case the Court voided a selection system under which no woman would be called for jury duty unless she had previously filed a written declaration of her desire to be subject to service, and, in another it invalidated a state selection system granting women who so requested an automatic exemption from jury service.

Second, there must be assurance that the jurors chosen are unbiased, i. e. , willing to decide the case on the basis of the evidence presented. The Court has held that in the absence of an actual showing of bias, a defendant in the District of Columbia is not denied an impartial jury when he is tried before a jury composed primarily of government employees. A violation of a defendant’s right to an impartial jury does occur, however, when the jury or any of its members is subjected to pressure or influence which could impair freedom of action; the trial judge should conduct a hearing in which the defense participates to determine whether impartiality has been undermined. Exposure of the jury to possibly prejudicial material and disorderly courtroom activities may deny impartiality and must be inquired into. Private communications, contact, or tampering with a jury, or the creation of circumstances raising the dangers thereof, is not to be condoned. When the locality of the trial has been saturated with publicity about a defendant, so that it is unlikely that he can obtain a disinterested jury, he is constitutionally entitled to a change of venue. It is undeniably a violation of due process to subject a defendant to trial in an atmosphere of mob or threatened mob domination.

Because it is too much to expect that jurors can remain uninfluenced by evidence they receive even though they are instructed to use it for only a limited purpose and to disregard it for other purposes, the Court will not permit a confession to be submitted to the jury without a prior determination by the trial judge that it is admissible. A defendant is denied due process, therefore, if he is convicted by a jury that has been instructed to first determine the voluntariness of a confession and then to disregard the confession if it is found to be inadmissible. Similarly invalid is a jury instruction in a joint trial to consider a confession only with regard to the defendant against whom it is admissible, and to disregard that confession as against a co-defendant which it implicates.

Nonetheless, there are limits on the extent to which an inquiry can be made into whether a criminal defendant’s right to a jury trial has been denied by a biased jury. With origins dating from the English common law, a rule of evidence has been adopted by the federal rules of evidence and by the vast majority of the states that forbids the “impeachment” or questioning of a verdict by inquiring into the internal deliberations of the jury. The “no impeachment” rule, which aims to promote “full and vigorous discussion” by jurors and to preserve the “stability” of jury verdicts, has limited the ability of criminal defendants to argue that a jury’s internal deliberations demonstrated bias amounting to a deprivation of the right to a jury trial. Indeed, the Court has held that the Sixth Amendment justifies an exception to the no impeachment rule in only the “gravest and most important cases.” As a result, the Court has rejected a Sixth Amendment exception to the rule when evidence existed that jurors were under the influence of alcohol and drugs during the trial. Likewise, the Court concluded that the no-impeachment rule prevented evidence from being introduced indicating that a jury forewoman had failed to disclose a prodefendant bias during jury selection (voir dire) and allegedly influenced the jury with such bias. In the Court’s view, three safeguards—(1) the voir dire process, (2) the ability for the court and counsel to observe the jury during trial, and (3) the potential for jurors to report untoward behavior to the court before rendering a verdict— adequately protect Sixth Amendment interests while preserving the values underlying the no impeachment rule.

However, in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the Court for the first time recognized a Sixth Amendment exception to the no-impeachment rule. In that case, a criminal defendant contended that his conviction by a Colorado jury for harassment and unlawful sexual contact should be overturned on constitutional grounds because evidence from two jurors revealed that a fellow juror had expressed anti-Hispanic bias toward the petitioner and his alibi witness during deliberations. The Court agreed, concluding that where a juror makes a “clear statement” indicating that he relied on “racial stereotypes or animus to convict a criminal defendant, the Sixth Amendment requires that the no-impeachment rule give way . . . .” In so holding, Pena-Rodriguez emphasized the “imperative to purge racial prejudice from the administration of justice” that underlies the Fourteenth Amendment, which, in turn, makes the Sixth Amendment applicable to the states. Contrasting the instant case from earlier rulings that involved “anomalous behavior from a single jury—or juror—gone off course,” the Court noted that racial bias in the judicial system was a “familiar and recurring evil” that required the judiciary to prevent “systematic injury to the administration of justice.” Moreover, the Court emphasized “pragmatic” rationales for its holding, noting that other checks on jury bias, such as questioning during voir dire or jurors reporting inappropriate statements during the course of deliberations, unlikely would disclose racial bias.

Inquiries into jury basis have arisen in the context of the imposition of the death penalty. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, the Court held that the exclusion in capital cases of jurors conscientiously scrupled about capital punishment, without inquiring whether they could consider the imposition of the death penalty in the appropriate case, violated a defendant’s constitutional right to an impartial jury. “A man who opposes the death penalty, no less than one who favors it, can make the discretionary judgment entrusted to him by the State and can thus obey the oath he takes as a juror.” A jury, the Court wrote, must “express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death,” and the automatic exclusion of all with generalized objections to the death penalty “stacked the deck” and made of the jury a tribunal “organized to return a verdict of death.” A court may not refuse a defendant’s request to examine potential jurors to determine whether they would vote automatically to impose the death penalty; general questions about fairness and willingness to follow the law are inadequate.

In Wainwright v. Witt, the Court held that the proper standard for exclusion is “whether the juror’s views would ‘prevent or substantially impair the performance of his duties as a juror in accordance with his instructions and his oath.’” Thus, to be excluded, a juror need not indicate that he would “automatic[ally]” vote against the death penalty, nor need his “bias be proved with ‘unmistakable clarity.’” Instead, a juror may be excused for cause “where the trial judge is left with the definite impression that a prospective juror would be unable to faithfully and impartially apply the law.” Persons properly excludable under Witherspoon may also be excluded from the guilt/innocence phase of a bifurcated capital trial. It had been argued that to exclude such persons from the guilt/innocence phase would result in a jury somewhat more predisposed to convict, and that this would deny the defendant a jury chosen from a fair cross-section. The Court rejected this argument, concluding that “it is simply not possible to define jury impartiality . . . by reference to some hypothetical mix of individual viewpoints.” Moreover, the state has “an entirely proper interest in obtaining a single jury that could impartially decide all of the issues in [a] case,” and need not select separate panels and duplicate evidence for the two distinct but interrelated functions. For the same reasons, there is no violation of the right to an impartial jury if a defendant for whom capital charges have been dropped is tried, along with a codefendant still facing capital charges, before a “death qualified” jury.

In Uttecht v. Brown, the Court summed up four principles subject dant has the right to an impartial jury drawn from a venire that has not been tilted in favor of capital punishment by selective prosecutorial challenges for cause. Second, the State has a strong interest in having jurors who are able to apply capital punishment within the framework state law prescribes. Third, to balance these interests, a juror who is substantially impaired in his or her ability to impose the death penalty under the state-law framework can be excused for cause; but if the juror is not substantially impaired, removal for cause is impermissible. Fourth, in determining whether the removal of a potential juror would vindicate the State’s interest without violating the defendant’s right, the trial court makes a judgment based in part on the demeanor of the juror, a judgment owed deference by reviewing courts.” If there is ambiguity in a prospective juror’s statement, a court is “entitled to resolve it in favor of the State.”

Exclusion of one juror qualified under Witherspoon constitutes reversible error, and the exclusion may not be subjected to harmless error analysis. However, a court’s error in refusing to dismiss for cause a prospective juror prejudiced in favor of the death penalty does not deprive a defendant of his right to trial by an impartial jury if he is able to exclude the juror through exercise of a peremptory challenge. The relevant inquiry is “on the jurors who ultimately sat,” the Court declared, rejecting as overly broad the assertion in Gray that the focus instead should be on “‘whether the composition of the jury panel as a whole could have been affected by the trial court’s error.’”

It is the function of the voir dire to give the defense and the prosecution the opportunity to inquire into, or have the trial judge inquire into, possible grounds of bias or prejudice that potential jurors may have, and to acquaint the parties with the potential jurors. It is good ground for challenge for cause that a juror has formed an opinion on the issue to be tried, but not every opinion which a juror may entertain necessarily disqualifies him. The judge must determine whether the nature and strength of the opinion raise a presumption against impartiality. It suffices for the judge to question potential jurors about their ability to put aside what they had heard or read about the case, listen to the evidence with an open mind, and render an impartial verdict; the judge’s refusal to go further and question jurors about the contents of news reports to which they had been exposed did not violate the Sixth Amendment.

Under some circumstances, it may be constitutionally required that questions specifically directed to the existence of racial bias must be asked. Thus, in a situation in which defendant, a black man, alleged that he was being prosecuted on false charges because of his civil rights activities in an atmosphere perhaps open to racial appeals, prospective jurors must be asked about their racial prejudice, if any. A similar rule applies in some capital trials, where the risk of racial prejudice “is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence.” A defendant accused of an interracial capital offense is entitled to have prospective jurors informed of the victim’s race and questioned as to racial bias. But in circumstances not suggesting a significant likelihood of racial prejudice infecting a trial, as when the facts are merely that the defendant is black and the victim white, the Constitution is satisfied by a more generalized but thorough inquiry into the impartiality of the veniremen.

Although government is not constitutionally obligated to allow peremptory challenges, typically a system of peremptory challenges has existed in criminal trials, in which both prosecution and defense may, without stating any reason, excuse a certain number of prospective jurors. Although, in Swain v. Alabama, the Court held that a prosecutor’s purposeful exclusion of members of a specific racial group from the jury would violate the Equal Protection Clause, it posited so difficult a standard of proof that defendants could seldom succeed. The Swain standard of proof was relaxed in Batson v. Kentucky, with the result that a defendant may establish an equal protection violation resulting from a prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges to systematically exclude blacks from the jury. A violation can occur whether or not the defendant and the excluded jurors are of the same race. Racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges does not, however, constitute a violation of the Sixth Amendment, the Court ruled in Holland v. Illinois. The Sixth Amendment “no more forbids the prosecutor to strike jurors on the basis of race than it forbids him to strike them on the basis of innumerable other generalized characteristics.” To rule otherwise, the Court reasoned, “would cripple the device of peremptory challenge” and thereby undermine the Amendment’s goal of “impartiality with respect to both contestants.”

The restraint on racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges is now a two-way street. The Court ruled in 1992 that a criminal defendant’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude jurors on the basis of race constitutes “state action” in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Disputing the contention that this limitation would undermine “the contribution of the peremptory challenge to the administration of justice,” the Court nonetheless asserted that such a result would in any event be “too high” a price to pay. “It is an affront to justice to argue that a fair trail includes the right to discriminate against a group of citizens based upon their race.” It followed, therefore, that the limitation on peremptory challenges does not violate a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Although a defendant has “the right to an impartial jury that can view him without racial animus,” this means that “there should be a mechanism for removing those [jurors] who would be incapable of confronting and suppressing their racism,” not that the defendant may remove jurors on the basis of race or racial stereotypes.

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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, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Annotations

Article III, § 2 requires that federal criminal cases be tried by jury in the state and district in which the offense was committed, but much criticism arose over the absence of any guarantee that the jury be drawn from the “vicinage” or neighborhood of the crime. Madison’s efforts to write into the Bill of Rights an express vicinage provision were rebuffed by the Senate, and the present language was adopted as a compromise. The provisions limit the Federal Government only.

An accused cannot be tried in one district under an indictment showing that the offense was committed in another; the place where the offense is charged to have been committed determines the place of trial. Thus, a defendant cannot be tried in Missouri for money-laundering if the charged offenses occurred in Florida and there was no evidence that the defendant had been involved with the receipt or transportation of the proceeds from Missouri. In a prosecution for conspiracy, the accused may be tried in any state and district where an overt act was performed. Where a United States Senator was indicted for agreeing to receive compensation for services to be rendered in a proceeding before a government department, and it appeared that a tentative arrangement for such services was made in Illinois and confirmed in St. Louis, the defendant was properly tried in St. Louis, although he was not physically present in Missouri when notice of ratification was dispatched. The offense of obtaining transportation of property in interstate commerce at less than the carrier’s published rates, or the sending of excluded matter through the mails, may be made triable in any district through which the forbidden transportation is conducted. By virtue of a presumption that a letter is delivered in the district to which it is addressed, the offense of scheming to defraud a corporation by mail was held to have been committed in that district although the letter was posted elsewhere. The Constitution does not require any preliminary hearing before issuance of a warrant for removal of an accused to the court having jurisdiction of the charge. The assignment of a district judge from one district to another, conformably to statute, does not create a new judicial district whose boundaries are undefined nor subject the accused to trial in a district not established when the offense with which he is charged was committed. For offenses against federal laws not committed within any state, Congress has the sole power to prescribe the place of trial; such an offense is not local and may be tried at such place as Congress may designate. The place of trial may be designated by statute after the offense has been committed.

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Justia › US Law › US Codes and Statutes › US Constitution Annotated › Sixth Amendment -- Rights of Accused in Criminal Prosecutions › Notice of Accusation

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, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Annotations

The constitutional right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation entitles the defendant to insist that the indictment apprise him of the crime charged with such reasonable certainty that he can make his defense and protect himself after judgment against another prosecution on the same charge. No indictment is sufficient if it does not allege all of the ingredients that constitute the crime. Where the language of a statute is, according to the natural import of the words, fully descriptive of the offense, it is sufficient if the indictment follows the statutory phraseology, but where the elements of the crime have to be ascertained by reference to the common law or to other statutes, it is not sufficient to set forth the offense in the words of the statute. The facts necessary to bring the case within the statutory definition must also be alleged. If an offense cannot be accurately and clearly described without an allegation that the accused is not within an exception contained in the statutes, an indictment that does not contain such allegation is defective. Despite the omission of obscene particulars, an indictment in general language is good if the unlawful conduct is described so as reasonably to inform the accused of the nature of the charge sought to be established against him. The Constitution does not require the government to furnish a copy of the indictment to an accused. The right to notice of accusation is so fundamental a part of procedural due process that the states are required to observe it.