The US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the US Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar the prosecution from retrying a criminal defendant if it is determined that the original trial venue was improper. In Smith v. US, the court found that “the strongest appropriate remedy for trial error is a new trial, not a judgment barring reprosecution.”
The court has a long-standing rule that, whenever “a defendant obtains a reversal of a prior, unsatisfied conviction, he may be retried in the normal course of events.” In Smith v. US, the court found that issues involving the Venue and Vicinage Clauses did not amount to violations of that rule—meaning criminal defendants could still be retried even if those clauses were found to have been violated.
The Venue Clause mandates that all criminal trials must be held where the defendant committed the criminal acts. Smith argued that the Venue Clause was designed to prevent criminal defendants from facing the added harm of reprosecution in another venue after facing an initial prosecution in an improper venue. But the court held that “the mere burden of a second trial has never justified an exemption from the retrial rule.”
Related to the Venue Clause, the Vicinage Clause protects criminal defendants’ right to an impartial jury from the location in which the criminal acts were committed. The court found that Smith’s argument regarding the Vicinage—which echoed that of his Venue Clause argument—provided even less support because of the narrow scope of the clause. The court said, “There is no reason to conclude that trial before a jury drawn from the wrong geographic area demands a different remedy” than the one laid out in the long-standing rule.
Setting the backdrop for the entire Smith case is the Double Jeopardy Clause located under the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. The Double Jeopardy Clause protects criminal defendants from being prosecuted twice for substantially the same crime. Here, Smith argued that allowing the prosecution to retry him on the exact same criminal case in another venue invoked the Double Jeopardy Clause, barring the prosecution from proceeding in the second, proper venue. The court, however, disagreed. The court found that the appeal’s court decision in this case, which vacated Smith’s original conviction in the improper venue, “did not adjudicate Smith’s culpability, and thus [did] not trigger the Double Jeopardy Clause.”
Federal prosecutors originally indicted Timothy Smith for hacking a Florida company. Smith was tried in Florida, but he argued that the venue was improper because he lives in Alabama. Even if he could correctly be tried in Florida, Smith argued he was tried in the wrong district court. The district court denied Smith’s motion to dismiss the case based on his claim of improper venue.
Following his conviction, Smith appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit who found that, while the original venue was improper, Smith was not entitled to double jeopardy protection from prosecution in a proper venue. The circuit court’s finding joined with the Sixth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits. Meanwhile, the Fifth and Eighth Circuits held that an acquittal is warranted in such circumstances. The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision resolves a split between lower circuit courts on the matter.
