Vicinage Clause
The Vicinage Clause is a provision in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution regulating the vicinity from which a jury pool may be selected.
[1] The Vicinage Clause limits the vicinity of criminal jury selection to both the state and the federal judicial district where the crime has been committed.
This is distinct from the venue provision of Article Three of the United States Constitution, which regulates the location of the actual trial.
The Vicinage clause has its roots in medieval English criminal procedure, the perceived abuses of criminal vicinage and venue during the colonial period (when trials for treason were being held in England rather than in the colony where the crime is alleged to have happened) and Anti-federalist objections to the United States Constitution.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "vicinage" as "A number of places lying near to each other taken collectively; an area extending to a limited distance round a particular spot; a neighbourhood.
"[11] The Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress adopted on October 14, 1774, resolved: On October 26, 1774, the Continental Congress approved an address to the people of Quebec, drafted by Thomas Cushing, Richard Henry Lee, and John Dickinson, arguing that: The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) accuses King George III of "transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences".
[23] The Committee of Eleven of the House amended Madison's language as follows: Aedanus Burke (A-SC) proposed that "vicinage" be replaced by "district or county in which the offence has been committed".
[25] Richard Henry Lee (A-VA) argued that "vicinage" was better, "it being a term well understood by every gentleman of legal knowledge".
[31] A September 14, 1789 letter from Madison to Edmund Pendleton reports: The altered form in which the Senate returned the Bill of Rights to the House led to a conference committee composed of members of both bodies.
[46] Lower courts are split on whether the Clause requires that the defendant be tried in a judicial district that was in existence at the time the crime was committed.
[48] Even proponents of the former view have found no infirmity when Congress prospectively divides a judicial district but retains the former configuration for past offenses.
[51] Kalt argues that two arguments the government might make in favor of prosecution would be unsuccessful: that the Idaho portion of the park is not part of a state[52] and that the judicial district could be changed after the crime.
[53] However, Kalt argues that the Vicinage Clause might permit a variety of prosecutorial strategies that would at least partially close this loophole.
First, the government might be able to charge other crimes that did not occur exclusively within the Idaho portion of the park (for example, if the defendant(s) conspired elsewhere).
[55] Third, the Clause might permit the government to encourage potential jurors to move into the Idaho portion of the park after the crime.
Others have noted that the prosecution could simply move for a change of venue due to the impossibility of finding an impartial jury in the location where the crime was committed.
[62][63] In Coleman's Appeal (1874), the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that "a man shall only be liable to be called on to answer for civil wrongs in the forum of his home, and the tribunal of his vicinage".
