Change of venue
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A change of venue is the legal term for moving a trial to a new location. In high-profile matters, a change of venue may occur to move a jury trial away from a location where a fair and impartial jury may not be possible due to widespread publicity about a crime and/or its defendant(s) to another community in order to obtain jurors who can be more objective in their duties. This change may be a few towns away, or across the state.
In law, the word venue designates the location where a trial will be held. It derives from the Latin word for "a place where people gather."
A change of venue may be reflected in the formal language used in a trial. For example, when a bailiff or marshal calls the court to order part of the cry will take the form "in and for the County of San Francisco"; When there is a change of venue the cry will be, "in the County of San Francisco for the County of Alameda."
[edit] High-profile cases
Examples of high-profile cases with a change of venue include the trials in Virginia of Beltway sniper attacks defendants Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad. The crimes occurred in Northern Virginia and caused widespread publicity. The judges selected communities with similar demographics but more than 100 miles distant in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach in the far southeastern edge of Virginia.
In the 20th century, controversial venue changes included the 1992 trial of the four Los Angeles police officers (LAPD) in the Rodney King incident; this trial was moved outside Los Angeles County to Simi Valley in neighboring Ventura County. In the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the court granted a change of venue, and ordered the case transferred from Oklahoma City to the U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch. In 1999, similar venue changes occurred in the Amadou Diallo murder case in which the NYPD defendants' trial was moved to Albany.
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| Primary articles | Jury trial · Grand jury (Indictment) · Jury instructions · Specific finding · Deliberation · Hung jury · Jury nullification · Jury tampering · Jury research |
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| Jury selection | Change of venue · Death-qualified jury · All-white jury · Peremptory challenge · Scientific jury selection · Struck jury | |
| Specific jurisdictions | Canada · England and Wales · Japan · United States (U.S. military) | |
| Groups | Fully Informed Jury Association · Capital Jury Project | |
