Court Opinion

ID: 9459881
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:34:16.400976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:22.555193
License: Public Domain

BAILEY ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I am entirely content with the court’s opinion, but since it makes reference to individuals, I would like to add that neither as a then member of the Judicial Conference, nor as an approver of the Maine Jury Plan, did I have any thought that there was an intent to affect venue. I thought of no objective except the fairness and randomness of selection, and even there geography played a relatively minor part. Thus in Massachusetts, which is a single district, with no statutory divisions, the Act permitted, and the Massachusetts Plan took advantage of, geographical parameters. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1863(b)(3), 1869(e). Accordingly, a defendant charged with having committed • an offense in Springfield, could be both indicted and tried by juries empanelled in Boston, none of whose members resided west of Worcester County, even though the court might, had convenience dictated, have chosen to sit in Springfield, in which case a western domiciled jury would have sat. Apart from any requirement in the Jury Act a Maine defendant could be tried in the division other than where his offense occurred. F.R.Crim.P. 18; United States v. O’Clair, 1 Cir., 1971, 451 F.2d 485, 486 n. 2, cert. denied 409 U.S. 986, 93 S.Ct. 339, 34 L.Ed.2d 252; United States v. Florence, 4 Cir., 1972, 456 F.2d 46 (Selective Service). It would be ironic if that Act, which plainly permits the Massachusetts result aforementioned, even though Massachusetts has six district judges, should lead to a requirement that the single Maine district judge jump back and forth from one division to the other simply because Maine is divided into two divisions for purposes of convenience in no way previously thought connected with jury selection. I do not read the language, either of the Act, or of the Maine Plan, as requiring such a result.