Although Timothy Smith was convicted for theft of trade secrets due to acts he committed while in Alabama involving computer servers located in the Middle District of Florida, he was charged and tried in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to trial, Smith moved to dismiss the charge for being brought in the wrong district in violation of the Constitution’s Venue Clause in Section 2 of Article III and the Sixth Amendment. Smith’s motion was denied and he was tried by a jury in the Northern District of Florida. After being found guilty, Smith appealed and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Smith’s conviction because he had been tried in the wrong district, but held that Smith could be subjected to trial again for the same offense in the proper district without implicating the Double Jeopardy Clause.
On appeal to the Supreme Court, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, Cato Institute, and the National Association for Public Defense argued that the Constitution requires a sufficient consequence to deter the government from selecting an unfair location and jury as the British Crown did by removing colonial defendants overseas to England for trial of charges like treason. While the Supreme Court acknowledged “there is no question that the founding generation enthusiastically embraced the vicinage right [to a jury from the district wherein the crime was committed] and wielded it as a political argument of the Revolution” by denouncing such violations in the Declaration of Independence, the Court nonetheless held that a defendant tried before a jury from the wrong geographic area can be prosecuted again for the same crime.
Michael Li-Ming Wong, Vladimir J. Semendyai, and Philip Hammersley of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP helped to advance the arguments in the Smith v. United States amicus briefs.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
This press release is also available at www.rutherford.org.
Source: https://tinyurl.com/2s6557yx
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