Abouammo v. United States · ¶2

Held: A defendant charged with violating §1519 must be tried in the dis- trict where the falsification occurred; he cannot be tried in a different district where the investigation was located because no “conduct con- stituting the offense” happened there. The Constitution twice safeguards a defendant’s venue right: Article III instructs that “Trial of all Crimes” shall “be held in the State where the Crimes shall have been committed,” §2, cl. 3, and the Sixth Amend- ment entitles criminal defendants to a jury “of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” To implement that constitutional rule, courts generally determine the location of the of- fense’s “essential conduct elements” by identifying “the conduct consti- tuting the offense”—the things a defendant must do to violate the stat- ute—and then ascertaining the place where those criminal acts occurred.…

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