Archive | venue

United States v. Davis, No. 10-3424-cr (2d Cir. August 8, 2012) (Leval, Raggi, Chin, CJJ)

Appellant Davis attempted to rob a drug dealer in Elmont, Queens. Once inside the dealer’s house, he shot and killed the dealer’s girlfriend, and shot at (but missed) the dealer’s mother. He was tried, convicted and sentenced on this – along with other offenses not challenged on appeal – in the Southern District

On appeal, he argued that there was no Southern District venue for the Elmont attempted robbery and associated weapons offenses. The circuit affirmed.

The opinion begins with a long and interesting discussion of venue, culminating with the circuit’s rule that for venue to lie there must be more than “some activity in the situs district” – there must be “substantial contacts.” Whether these exist depends on “the site of the defendant’s acts, the elements and nature of the crime, the locus …

United States v. Tzolov, No. 10-562-cr (2d Cir. June 15, 2011) (Feinberg, Parker, Wesley, CJJ)

Eric Butler, the appellant here, was one of the conspirators in a securities fraud scheme arising from the failure of the auction rate securities market. The scheme operated largely out of an office in Manhattan, but Butler was prosecuted in the Eastern District, where he was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The scheme’s ties to EDNY were, to put it mildly, scant – on occasion the defendants would fly out of JFK to meet with investors in other cities and try to scam them. But, apart from that, everything happened elsewhere.

On appeal, the circuit agreed that venue was improper in EDNY for the substantive securities fraud count, but affirmed as to the conspiracy counts. In light of the dismissal of one count, the court also remanded the …