Opinion ID: 2617650
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Decisions of Other Jurisdictions.

Text: Courts have had few occasions to construe the vicinage requirement in the Sixth Amendment. (See 2 LaFave & Israel, Criminal Procedure (1984) § 21.2, p. 715.) Insofar as the procedures for trial of criminal cases in federal court have been challenged and validated under the Sixth Amendment vicinage provision, they provide guidance in determining the vicinage rights that accrue to defendants under the federal Constitution in the trial of criminal cases in state courts. (5) Although a federal criminal defendant has a clear right to be tried within the federal judicial district in which the crime is committed (Fed. Rules Crim. Proc., rule 18, 18 U.S.C.), there is no constitutional right to trial in a particular division of a judicial district. ( United States v. Anderson (1946) 328 U.S. 699, 704, 705 [90 L.Ed. 1529, 1532-1533, 66 S.Ct. 1213]; United States v. Dickie (5th Cir.1985) 775 F.2d 607, 610; Franklin v. United States (5th Cir.1967) 384 F.2d 377, 378, cert. den. 390 U.S. 954 [19 L.Ed.2d 1147, 88 S.Ct. 1048].) Further, there is no constitutional right to have jurors drawn from the entire district in which the crime occurred. ( Ruthenberg v. United States (1918) 245 U.S. 480, 482 [62 L.Ed. 414, 418, 38 S.Ct. 168].) The procedures for selection of jurors is set out in the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968, 28 United States Code section 1861. The act requires only that selection be made from political subdivisions surrounding the place where the court is held; it gives no right to a jury from the entire district. The restriction has been upheld against constitutional challenge. United States v. Florence (4th Cir.1972) 456 F.2d 46 is illustrative: In Florence, the court held that defendant, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, had neither a constitutional nor statutory right to a jury selected from the entire federal judicial district or to a jury selected from the Parkersburg division of that district (locale of the crime): The validity of a selection less encompassing than district-wide was repeatedly upheld against attacks that a defendant was entitled to a jury selected from the entire district and not from just the division or area surrounding the place of trial where trial was held. ( United States v. Gottfried, 165 F.2d 360 (2d Cir.1948), cert. den., 333 U.S. 860....) It should be noted that United States v. Gottfried, supra , upheld the validity of this restriction even after consideration of Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U.S. 217 ... (1946), ... which held that jurors must be drawn in such a manner as to include representatives of all of the economic, social, religious, political and geographical groups of the community. Thus, under old § 1865(a) the district court would have been permitted to draw jurors only from the Elkins `division [locale of Florence trial],' and neither the 1968 Act nor the Constitution requires a departure from this rule. ( Id. at p. 49.) A number of other circuit court decisions have interpreted the vicinage provision of the Sixth Amendment to guarantee, in federal prosecutions, only selection of a jury drawn from within the federal judicial district, and not from within the division, in which the crime was committed. (See United States v. Balistrieri (7th Cir.1985) 778 F.2d 1226, 1229, cert. den. (1986) 477 U.S. 908 [91 L.Ed.2d 573, 106 S.Ct. 3284]; United States v. Young (8th Cir.1980) 618 F.2d 1281, 1288, cert. den. (1980) 449 U.S. 844 [66 L.Ed.2d 52, 101 S.Ct. 126]; United States v. Mase (2d Cir.1977) 556 F.2d 671, 675, cert. den. (1978) 435 U.S. 916 [55 L.Ed.2d 508, 98 S.Ct. 1472]; Franklin v. United States, supra, 384 F.2d 377, 378.) (3c) The Sixth Amendment vicinage rights have been similarly delineated for state criminal prosecutions where a defendant is tried in one county before a jury drawn from that county and which excludes residents of the county where the crime occurred. ( Zicarelli v. Gray, supra, 543 F.2d 466.) Zicarelli was the subject of several state indictments arising out of crimes committed in Hudson County, New Jersey. Upon motion of the prosecution, venue was shifted to Burlington County, where Zicarelli was tried and convicted on several counts by a jury drawn from Burlington County. The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld his convictions; the federal district court denied a petition for writ of habeas corpus; the circuit court upheld the lower court's order. [7] After a review of the federal and state cases, the Zicarelli court concluded: [ United States v.] Florence [, supra, 456 F.2d 46] and the majority of the other decisions appear to allow substantially the same latitude as was given the federal courts in the late eighteenth century. With few exceptions, the modern cases require that the petit jurors be drawn from within the state and federal judicial district in which the crime was committed, but they do not compel a narrower geographical focus than that. They are thus consistent with the understanding of the geographical limitations expressed by Congress in 1789 and adopted by the states in the following two years. And they adhere to the historical ambience of the amendment. [¶] We therefore hold that Zicarelli's federal constitutional rights were not transgressed when the state of New Jersey tried him before a jury drawn from Burlington County on charges of criminal activity that had occurred in Hudson County. The petit jury was drawn from both the state and the federal judicial district within which the crimes occurred, and the state-and-district guarantee of the Constitution promises no more. ( Zicarelli, 543 F.2d at p. 482, fn. omitted.) Consistent with Zicarelli is Bradley v. Judges of Super. Ct. for Los Angeles Cty. (9th Cir.1976) 531 F.2d 413, which involved, inter alia, state prisoners' claims that their rights were violated as a result of being tried by juries chosen under Code of Civil Procedure section 206. Section 206, as it stood at the time, permitted the selection of jurors in either of two ways: In one (district draw) jurors are chosen from voters residing in the district of the trial. The other (dual draw) is the same, except that jurors for Central District trials are chosen from the voters of the whole county. ( Bradley, supra, 531 F.2d at p. 415.) The prisoners claimed that they were deprived of their right under the Sixth Amendment to a jury of the vicinage when they were tried in the Central District with juries chosen by the dual draw system. Although Bradley involved section 206 and a cross-section representation claim as well, the portion of Bradley addressing the vicinage requirement is nonetheless instructive, as Bradley arose in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. The Bradley court observed that the vicinage requirement was deleted from the Sixth Amendment by the Senate, as it was felt to be too strict and [a]t the time, juries were drawn from the county in only a few states, and juries drawn from a whole state were not unheard-of. ( Bradley, supra, 531 F.2d at p. 417.) The court commented that modern day Los Angeles County, with its efficient network of transportation and communications, is no less acceptable a vicinage than a state of the Revolutionary period with a dispersed and isolated population. ( Ibid. ) Concluding that there was no vicinage violation, the court declared, the `district' from which the Constitution requires a jury to be drawn need not be identical to a judicial subdivision such as the Central District. ( Ibid. ) The majority of state courts considering the vicinage issue have declined to expand the vicinage right as far as the majority did in Jones, supra, 9 Cal.3d 546. (See Com. v. Duteau (1981) 384 Mass. 321 [424 N.E.2d 1119, 1126]; People v. Taylor (1976) 39 N.Y.2d 649 [385 N.Y.S.2d 270, 350 N.E.2d 600, 603]; People v. Goldswer (1976) 39 N.Y.2d 656 [385 N.Y.S.2d 274, 350 N.E.2d 604, 608]; State v. Kappos (Iowa 1971) 189 N.W.2d 563; cf. People v. Scher (1973) 76 Misc.2d 71 [349 N.Y.S.2d 902, 911-12].) In People v. Taylor, supra, 350 N.E.2d 600, the New York Court of Appeals considered a challenge to a New York statute establishing special, centralized narcotics parts, or districts, to hear narcotics indictments in certain cities, including New York City. The statute provided that narcotics cases could be transferred from any county to the special narcotics part and that trial of an indictment in a special narcotics part [should] for all purposes be deemed to be a trial in the county in which the indictment was filed. ( Taylor, supra, 350 N.E.2d at p. 602, citations omitted.) Taylor urged that the term district in the Sixth Amendment was synonymous with the term county in state trials and that, because he was tried by a jury drawn exclusively from New York County for crimes committed in Kings County, he was denied the right to a jury of the vicinage as well as an impartial jury representing a cross-section of the community. The Taylor court determined that, under either the state or federal Constitutions, Taylor was denied neither. Addressing the Sixth Amendment contentions, the court noted that in Federal prosecutions the `word district as used in the Sixth Amendment no doubt referred to the judicial districts established' by Congress in the Federal Judiciary Act ... but the fact remains that the Legislature of this State  and most States generally ...  has designated the place of trial without reference to the judicial district created by [the Federal Judiciary Act].... [D]efendant's rights in this regard have been governed by ... the common-law right to be tried by a jury from the county where the crime was committed unless the Legislature provides otherwise. ( Taylor, supra, 350 N.E.2d at p. 602.)