Court Opinion

ID: 9592389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:13:45.00699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:16.899521
License: Public Domain

Holbrook, Jr.
(dissenting). I dissent from the *417majority’s holding that the mere fact of travel through a county, without more, constitutes an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy formed in another county. Here, Lavinia Peoples’ act of driving through Oakland County in her journey between Saginaw and Detroit was merely incidental and fortuitous to the conspiracy charge. See, e.g., Commonwealth v McPhail, 429 Pa Super 103; 631 A2d 1305 (1993); Lucas v United States, 275 F 405 (CA 8, 1921), cert den 258 US 620 (1922).
Indeed, Peoples could have taken another route to Detroit that did not traverse Oakland County, or she could have taken a plane and merely flown through airspace above Oakland County.1 I find nothing meaningful or significant about Peoples’ travel through Oakland County that could be construed under MCL 762.8; MSA 28.851 as an "act” —whether overt or not — done in perpetration of the conspiracy. To hold otherwise, I believe, would extend venue in criminal cases to absurd limits. For example, had an unlawful agreement to distribute narcotics been formed in Houghton County in the Upper Peninsula, would proper venue lie in each of the approximately nineteen counties the coconspirator would have to drive through on her way to Detroit to purchase the narcotics? I think not.
While the Legislature is clearly authorized to fix venue for criminal offenses, questions of venue are not merely matters of legal procedure, but "raise deep issues of public policy in the light of which legislation must be construed.” United States v Johnson, 323 US 273, 276; 65 S Ct 249; 89 L Ed 236 (1944). In construing a federal criminal statute *418that outlawed fraudulent use of the mails and that contained no specific venue provision, the Johnson Court, id. at 275, reasoned:
By utilizing the doctrine of a continuing offense, Congress may, to be sure, provide that the locality of a crime shall extend over the whole area through which force propelled by an offender operates. Thus, an illegal use of the mails or of other instruments of commerce may subject the user to prosecution in the district where he sent the goods, or in the district of their arrival, or in any intervening district. Plainly enough, such leeway not only opens the door to needless hardship to an accused by prosecution remote from home and from appropriate facilities for defense. It also leads to the appearance of abuses, if not to abuses, in the selection of what may be deemed a tribunal favorable to the prosecution.
Thus, while I recognize that the Legislature intended in enacting MCL 762.8; MSA 28.851 "to define more specifically and possibly in some cases to extend the jurisdiction of courts in criminal cases,” People v Doe, 264 Mich 475, 478; 250 NW 270 (1933) (North, J., dissenting), I do not believe that it intended to erase all reasonable constraints on venue as will occur under the majority’s reasoning.
Accordingly, I dissent.

 But see Marsh v State, 95 NM 224, 226; 620 P2d 878 (1980) (although finding venue proper in county over which airplane flew while transporting marijuana, the court used its superintending control to transfer the case to another county with "a more substantial nexus between the criminal acts and the county”).