Vicinage Clause

The Vicinage Clause is a provision in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution regulating the vicinity from which a jury pool may be selected. The clause says that the accused shall be entitled to an "impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law".^[1] The Vicinage Clause limits the vicinity of criminal jury selection to both the state and the federal judicial district where the crime has been committed. This is distinct from the venue provision of Article Three of the United States Constitution, which regulates the location of the actual trial.

The Vicinage clause has its roots in medieval English criminal procedure, the perceived abuses of criminal vicinage and venue during the colonial period (when trials for treason were being held in England rather than in the colony where the crime is alleged to have happened) and Anti-federalist objections to the United States Constitution. The clause is one of the few constitutional criminal procedure provisions that has not been incorporated to apply to proceedings in state courts, the other being the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment.^[2]

The Clause has led to very little litigation, in part because of its overlap (as a practical matter) with the venue provision of Article Three and Rule 18 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Further, with the exception of the Court for the District of Wyoming, whose district includes the portions of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho and Montana, no federal judicial district includes the territory of two or more states (except, historically, the District of Potomac, which existed from February 1801 to March 1802).