Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 50.0

524us1$71P 02-16-99 22:29:48 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 524 U. S. 1 (1998)

5

Opinion of the Court

“[n]o activity of money laundering . . . occurred in Missouri.”
Id., at 11a, 14a.

On the Government’s appeal, the Eighth Circuit afﬁrmed
the District Court’s dismissal of the money-laundering
counts.
109 F. 3d 471, as amended, 115 F. 3d 621 (CA8 1997).
The conspiracy charge was not part of the appeal, and that
count remains pending in the Missouri District Court.
109
F. 3d, at 472, n. 2, as amended, 115 F. 3d 621.

The Court of Appeals ﬁrst recounted law that is not in
doubt: “Both Rule 18 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Proce-
dure and the Constitution require that a person be tried for
an offense where that offense is committed,” 109 F. 3d, at
472; also, the site of a charged offense “ ‘must be determined
from the nature of the crime alleged and the location of the
act or acts constituting it,’ ” ibid. (quoting United States v.
Anderson, 328 U. S. 699, 703 (1946)).
“Continuing offenses,”
the Court of Appeals recognized, those “begun in one district
and completed in another,” 18 U. S. C. § 3237(a), may be tried
“ ‘in any district in which such [an] offense was begun, contin-
109 F. 3d, at 472 (quoting § 3237(a)).
ued, or completed.’ ”
But “Cabrales was not accused of a ‘continuing offense,’ ”
the Eighth Circuit said, ibid.; “[s]he was charged with money
laundering, for transactions which began, continued, and
were completed only in Florida,” ibid.
“That the money
came from Missouri is of no moment,” the Court of Appeals
next observed, for “Cabrales dealt with it only in Florida.”
Ibid. The money-laundering counts “include[d] no act com-
mitted by Cabrales in Missouri,” the Eighth Circuit empha-
sized, nor did “the [G]overnment charge that Cabrales trans-
ported the money from Missouri to Florida.”

Ibid.

The Government urges that, in conﬂict with the Eighth
Circuit, other Courts of Appeals “have held that venue for
money laundering offenses is proper in the district in which
the funds were unlawfully generated, even if the ﬁnancial
transaction that constitutes the laundering occurred wholly
within another district.” Pet. for Cert. 9–10 (citing United