{"id":180,"date":"2026-06-11T22:08:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=180"},"modified":"2026-06-11T22:08:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:08:19","slug":"court-unanimously-sides-with-defendant-in-criminal-venue-dispute-over-where-a-crime-occurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=180","title":{"rendered":"Court unanimously sides with defendant in criminal venue dispute over where a crime occurs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in Abouammo v. United States<\/em> that federal prosecutors can try a defendant only in the district where his crime was committed, not where its \u201ccontemplated effects\u201d were felt. Specifically, in a unanimous decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the justices rejected a federal appeals court\u2019s conclusion that the intent requirement in 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 1519 \u2013 which criminalizes falsifying documents in a federal investigation \u2013 allows the government to prosecute the defendant where such an investigation is located.<\/p>\n

Read more Alabama asks Supreme Court to allow execution using nitrogen gas<\/a><\/p>\n

Ahmad Abouammo was convicted of violating Section 1519 by creating a fake invoice on his computer in Seattle and emailing it to FBI agents. From 2013 to 2015, Abouammo worked at Twitter\u2019s San Francisco headquarters, where his\u00a0role gave him access to a tool that could pull users\u2019 private, identifying data. Prosecutors said he used that access to find information about Saudi dissidents and pass it along to a high-level official in the Saudi royal court. In return, Abouammo received a luxury watch along with three wire transfers of $100,000 each as \u201cconsulting\u201d income. A humanitarian worker for the Red Cross who\u00a0tweeted\u00a0satire \u201ccritical of the Saudi government\u201d had his information\u00a0disclosed\u00a0and was apparently \u201cdetained in Saudi Arabia due to the Twitter account, held in solitary confinement, and tortured,\u201d before disappearing.<\/p>\n

Abouammo left Twitter in 2015 and moved to Seattle, working as a freelance social media consultant. Around the same time, the FBI\u2019s San Francisco field office \u201copened an investigation\u00a0into\u00a0Twitter employees\u2019 potential unauthorized accessing of Twitter information,\u201d and two FBI agents subsequently\u00a0flew from their Palo Alto satellite office to Seattle to interview Abouammo. After a few hours speaking to him, the agents asked Abouammo whether he had documentation showing the money he had received from his Saudi contacts was legitimate consulting income. Abouammo excused himself, went upstairs, and, according to later-recovered metadata, spent that time fabricating a backdated $100,000 invoice from his consulting company. He then emailed it to the agents sitting downstairs.<\/p>\n

The government prosecuted Abouammo in San Francisco, where the FBI investigation was based, rather than in Seattle where he created the document. Abouammo attempted to dismiss the charge for improper venue, arguing Section 1519\u2019s language made the crime complete when he finished falsifying the document, which occurred in Seattle.<\/p>\n

In a unanimous nine-page opinion, Kagan agreed.<\/p>\n

Kagan began by discussing the historical purpose of the venue clause. The Declaration of Independence, Kagan wrote, listed Parliament\u2019s practice of \u201ctransporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences\u201d among its grievances. Kagan noted that the Constitution protects the venue right two times over: Article III instructs that \u201cTrial of all Crimes\u201d shall \u201cbe held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed,\u201d and the Sixth Amendment reinforces that guarantee, giving defendants the right to a jury \u201cof the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.\u201d To implement that constitutional rule, Kagan continued, courts generally determine the location of a crime\u2019s \u201cessential conduct elements,\u201d or the things a defendant must actually do to violate the statute.<\/p>\n

For Section 1519, the \u201cessential conduct elements\u201d occurred in Seattle, according to Kagan. Specifically, the statute imposes liability on a person who knowingly \u201cfalsifies\u201d a \u201crecord [or] document\u201d \u201cwith the intent to impede [or] obstruct\u201d a federal investigation. \u201cThe only prohibited act in that statute is the falsification of a document,\u201d Kagan wrote. \u201cOnce a person has committed that act (with the requisite intent), he need do nothing more to violate the law.\u201d In other words, the defendant does not need to transmit the document to anyone nor use it in any particular way \u2013 because the only proscribed conduct is falsification, venue must be where falsification occurred.<\/p>\n

Read more Protecting the justices<\/a><\/p>\n

Kagan then addressed the central holding from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which had concluded that Section 1519\u2019s intent requirement, or the demand that the falsification be done \u201cwith the intent\u201d to obstruct, made the \u201ccontemplated effects\u201d of the falsification part of the offense\u2019s essential conduct, therefore permitting the trial to be held in San Francisco, where the targeted investigation was based. Kagan rejected that approach, writing that \u201c[t]his Court has never looked to a statute\u2019s mens rea <\/em>[intent] elements in considering venue. Nor would it make much sense to do so.\u201d Thus, a falsification done with intent to obstruct an investigation \u201coccurs wherever the falsification does\u2014which here was in Abouammo\u2019s Seattle home.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Kagan summarized: \u201c[W]hatever obstructive effects Abouammo\u2019s false invoice may have had in northern California, they were not elements of his crime. And because that is so, those effects cannot figure in determining where Abouammo\u2019s \u2018crime [was] committed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s remaining theory, that Section 1519 should be treated as an \u201cinchoate offense,\u201d or as a step toward another crime, fared no better. Kagan responded to the government\u2019s analogy to conspiracy charges, which can be brought \u201cwherever an overt act furthering the conspiracy has taken place, even when only a criminal agreement\u2014and not those overt acts\u2014is required to prove the conspiracy charged,\u201d meaning, on the government\u2019s theory, Abouammo\u2019s transmission of the fake invoice to San Francisco would then allow for venue there. \u201cThe fundamental problem with that theory,\u201d Kagan wrote, \u201cis that \u00a71519 is an independent crime, not an inchoate offense.\u201d As such, Section 1519 \u201cspells out a standalone crime for falsifying (and otherwise tampering with) documents\u201d and \u201cvenue for it must be based on the conduct that \u00a71519 itself proscribes, not on the conduct another law does.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court described its holding as \u201c\u2018discrete\u2019 and narrow, as our venue decisions usually are.\u201d \u201cThe trial for falsifying a document,\u201d Kagan concluded, \u201cmust take place where the defendant falsified the document. Here that was in Seattle\u2014meaning in venue terms, the Western District of Washington. The trial should not have occurred in the Northern District of California because no \u2018conduct constituting the offense\u2019 happened in that location.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case is the latest in a series of criminal law decisions favoring defendants over the last two terms. Although this may surprise some, it is not unusual when the court sees a statute\u2019s text and history as on the defendant\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

Read more Opinions on the way<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in Abouammo v. United States that federal prosecutors can try a defendant only in the district where his crime was committed, not where its \u201ccontemplated effects\u201d were felt. Specifically, in a unanimous decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the justices rejected a federal appeals court\u2019s conclusion that the intent requirement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion-analysis"],"yoast_head":"\nCourt unanimously sides with defendant in criminal venue dispute over where a crime occurs - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=180\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court unanimously sides with defendant in criminal venue dispute over where a crime occurs - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in Abouammo v. 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