Opinion ID: 605
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Venue Motion

Text: Appellants contend that the district court improperly denied their motion pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 21(a) for a change of venue. We review the district court's disposition of such a motion for abuse of discretion. United States v. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d 934, 967 (2d Cir. 1990). Rule 21(a) provides in relevant part that [u]pon the defendant's motion, the court must transfer the proceeding against that defendant to another district if the court is satisfied that so great a prejudice against the defendant exists in the transferring district that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial there. Fed.R.Crim.P. 21(a). The defendant must show a reasonable likelihood that prejudicial news prior to trial will prevent a fair trial. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d at 966-67 (quoting Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 363, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966) (internal quotation marks omitted)). In assessing the motion, the district court may take into account, inter alia, the extent to which the government is responsible for generating the publicity, the extent to which the publicity focuses on the crime rather than on the individual defendants charged with it, and other factors reflecting on the likely effect of the publicity on the ability of potential jurors in the district to hear the evidence impartially. Id. at 967. The Sabhnanis contend that the prosecution generated prejudicial pretrial publicity during bail hearings on May 15 and 17, 2007. In the course of the bail proceedings, the government 0 described the charged crimes as involving incomprehensible brutality and violence and inhumanity. The local news media printed and broadcast stories about the matter, several of which repeated the prosecution's statement that this was a case of modern day slavery. The tabloid newspapers dubbed Varsha Cruella, after the Disney villain Cruella de Vil, and printed details of the methods that the Sabhnanis allegedly used to torture their victims. During the weeks following the bail hearings, in which there was a significant amount of litigation over the bail conditions, see United States v. Sabhnani, No. 07-CR-429, 2007 WL 2769487, at -2 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 21, 2007) (order denying transfer motion), the media reported on various developments in the case, continually referring to it as the Slave Case. The coverage also repeatedly referenced the Sabhnanis' wealth and the value and size of their home. We conclude that the district judge did not abuse his discretion in denying the Sabhnanis' motion to transfer venue. First, we agree with the district court that the prosecution's statements regarding the character of the crimes were proper in the context in which they were made: bail hearings in which the prosecutors were arguing that the Sabhnanis were a danger to the victims and their families, justifying an order of pretrial detention. The prosecution's mention of the Sabhnanis' wealth was likewise proper in the context of arguing that the Sabhnanis were a risk of flight due to their substantial means. While a district court may consider the government's role in generating adverse publicity in deciding a motion for change of venue, legitimate advocacy at a court proceeding  even advocacy resulting in adverse pretrial publicity  does not constitute conduct for which the government is properly held responsible in a Rule 21(a) inquiry. Nor do we find any error in the district court's determination that, in any event, the press coverage appears to have been driven at least as much by comments of the Sabhnanis' counsel as by any prosecutor's statement. See Sabhnani, 2007 WL 2769487, at  & nn. 4-6. Second, we similarly conclude that the pretrial publicity here was not so pervasive and prejudicial as to have created a reasonable likelihood that a fair trial could not be conducted. The bail hearings took place in mid-May, and voir dire in the case began in late October, five months later. This is a shorter amount of time than has been present in some cases in which we have noted that the effects of publicity had dissipated by the time the trial began. See, e.g., United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 155 (2d Cir.2003). However, in Maldonado-Rivera, we affirmed the denial of a motion to transfer venue even though the district judge there found that the press coverage was continuing and prominent. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d at 967 (describing district court's finding of slightly more than one article per week over a three-year period). Moreover, the record here indicates, as the district court found, that most of the press coverage tracked the frequent court proceedings in this case. See, e.g., Varsha App. 10-11 (first appearance), 14-15, 22 (second bail hearing), 28-30 (indictment), 33-65 (litigation over bail conditions). Coverage of actual developments in a criminal case generally will not rise to the level of prejudicial publicity that will warrant a venue change. Most importantly, the cases involving claims that pretrial publicity was so inherently prejudicial that a fair trial in the district could not be had draw a clear distinction between mere exposure to pretrial publicity and actual prejudgment by the venire of the issues to be decided in the case. We must distinguish between mere familiarity with petitioner or his past and an actual predisposition against him.... To ignore the real differences in the potential for prejudice would not advance the cause of fundamental fairness, but only make impossible the timely prosecution of persons who are well known in the community.... Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 800 n. 4, 95 S.Ct. 2031, 44 L.Ed.2d 589 (1975). It is true that the Supreme Court has in the past stated that publicity can so saturate a community (and be so highly prejudicial to the defendants) that courts should in such cases presume a fair trial was impossible. See, e.g., Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, 724-26, 83 S.Ct. 1417, 10 L.Ed.2d 663 (1963) (defendant was filmed, possibly without his knowledge, confessing to details of crime, and film was shown repeatedly on television in relatively small community); see also Patton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 1031, 104 S.Ct. 2885, 81 L.Ed.2d 847 (1984) ([A]dverse pretrial publicity can create such a presumption of prejudice in a community that the jurors' claims that they can be impartial should not be believed.) (describing the holding of Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961)). Cases presenting this scenario are very rare, however, and have been characterized by our sister circuits as extreme situation[s], United States v. Campa, 459 F.3d 1121, 1143 (11th Cir.2006) (en banc) (upholding rejection of motion to transfer venue of accused Cuban spies from Miami despite alleged pervasive prejudice against the Cuban government in the district), in which the publicity in essence displaced the judicial process. United States v. McVeigh, 153 F.3d 1166, 1181 (10th Cir.1998). The Sabhnanis argue that we need not employ a presumption of prejudice here because there is actual evidence that the venire was biased. The record, however, does not establish that the venire had prejudged the Sabhnanis' case, and nothing argued to the district court or to this court suggests anything to the contrary. The Sabhnanis point to the voir dire and, in particular, to the responses to questioning by some potential jurors as evidence that these jurors, who were excused, had been biased against them by the media coverage. [8] They also point to an e-mail sent to the court by an excused potential juror, who claimed that other members of the venire were lying and pretending to live in a cave in order to serve on the jury in the case. Varsha App. 129-30. We have noted, in the context of the appeal from a conviction involving crimes far more notorious than the ones in this case, that the key to determining the appropriateness of a change of venue is a searching voir dire. Yousef, 327 F.3d at 155. Here, as in Yousef, the Sabhnanis did not renew their motion to change the trial's venue directly after the jury's voir dire, nor do they object here to the voir dire's sufficiency. Moreover, in seeking a new trial before the district court post-verdict, although Varsha did point to adverse publicity, she never contended that the voir dire itself was deficient in any respect. See id. (taking such silence as an indication that counsel was satisfied that the voir dire resulted in a jury that had not been tainted by publicity). The evidence the Sabhnanis point to establishes no more than that some members of the venire had been exposed to publicity, and that some may have been reluctant to admit it. We have rejected claims that the venire was not sufficiently impartial in cases in which the evidence that excused potential jurors had formed an opinion of the defendant's guilt or innocence based on pretrial publicity was far more substantial. See, e.g., Knapp v. Leonardo, 46 F.3d 170, 176 (2d Cir.1995) (finding no manifest error in state court's determination that jury was impartial when defendant argued that 83% of veniremen were excused because they had prejudged the case); see also United States v. Higgs, 353 F.3d 281, 308-09 (4th Cir.2003) (affirming denial of motion to transfer venue in which majority of potential jurors had heard about the case and several stated that they had formed an opinion based on publicity). Here, neither the character of the publicity nor the extent to which potential jurors were either exposed to it or affected by it warrants the conclusion that a presumption or inference of generalized prejudice was appropriate in this case. We conclude that the district court's denial of the motion for a change of venue was not an abuse of discretion.