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UNITED STATES v. CABRALES

Opinion of the Court

States v. Heaps, 39 F. 3d 479, 482 (CA4 1994); United States
v. Beddow, 957 F. 2d 1330, 1335–1336 (CA6 1992); United
States v. Sax, 39 F. 3d 1380, 1390–1391 (CA7 1994); United
States v. Angotti, 105 F. 3d 539, 544–545 (CA9 1997)). We
granted certiorari to resolve the conﬂict, 522 U. S. 1072
(1998), and now afﬁrm the Eighth Circuit’s judgment.

II

Proper venue in criminal proceedings was a matter of con-
cern to the Nation’s founders. Their complaints against the
King of Great Britain,
listed in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, included his transportation of colonists “beyond
Seas to be tried.” 1 The Constitution twice safeguards the
defendant’s venue right: Article III, § 2, cl. 3, instructs that
“Trial of all Crimes . . . shall be held in the State where
the said Crimes shall have been committed”; the Sixth
Amendment calls for trial “by an impartial jury of the
State and district wherein the crime shall have been com-
mitted.” Rule 18 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Pro-
cedure, providing that “prosecution shall be had in a district
in which the offense was committed,” echoes the constitu-
tional commands.

We adhere to the general guide invoked and applied by
the Eighth Circuit: “[T]he locus delicti must be determined

1 The Declaration recited among injuries and usurpations attributed
to the King: “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended
offences.” The Declaration of Independence, para. 21 (1776). A com-
plaint of the same tenor appeared earlier, in the 1769 “Virginia Resolves.”
See Blume, The Place of Trial of Criminal Cases: Constitutional Vicinage
and Venue, 43 Mich. L. Rev. 59, 64 (1944). Parliament had decreed that
colonists charged with treason could be tried in England. See 16 Par-
liamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to Year 1803,
In response, the Virginia House of
pp. 476–510 (T. Hansard ed. 1813).
Burgesses unanimously passed a resolution condemning the practice of
sending individuals “beyond the Sea, to be tried” as “highly derogatory
of the Rights of British subjects.”
Journals of the House of Burgesses of
Virginia, 1766–1769, p. 214 (J. Kennedy ed. 1906).