6
Opinion of the Court
States v. Heaps, 39 F. 3d 479, 482 (CA4 1994); United States v. Beddow, 957 F. 2d 1330, 1335-1336 (CA6 1992); United States v. Sax, 39 F. 3d 1380, 1390-1391 (CA7 1994); United States v. Angotti, 105 F. 3d 539, 544-545 (CA9 1997)). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict, 522 U. S. 1072 (1998), and now affirm the Eighth Circuit's judgment.
II
Proper venue in criminal proceedings was a matter of concern to the Nation's founders. Their complaints against the King of Great Britain, listed in the Declaration of Independence, included his transportation of colonists "beyond Seas to be tried." 1 The Constitution twice safeguards the defendant's venue right: Article III, § 2, cl. 3, instructs that "Trial of all Crimes . . . shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed"; the Sixth Amendment calls for trial "by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." Rule 18 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, providing that "prosecution shall be had in a district in which the offense was committed," echoes the constitutional commands.
We adhere to the general guide invoked and applied by the Eighth Circuit: "[T]he locus delicti must be determined
1 The Declaration recited among injuries and usurpations attributed to the King: "transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences." The Declaration of Independence, para. 21 (1776). A complaint of the same tenor appeared earlier, in the 1769 "Virginia Resolves." See Blume, The Place of Trial of Criminal Cases: Constitutional Vicinage and Venue, 43 Mich. L. Rev. 59, 64 (1944). Parliament had decreed that colonists charged with treason could be tried in England. See 16 Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to Year 1803, pp. 476-510 (T. Hansard ed. 1813). In response, the Virginia House of Burgesses unanimously passed a resolution condemning the practice of sending individuals "beyond the Sea, to be tried" as "highly derogatory of the Rights of British subjects." Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1766-1769, p. 214 (J. Kennedy ed. 1906).
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