In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Article III, § 2 requires that federal criminal cases be tried by jury in the state in which the offense was committed,1 but much criticism arose over the absence of any guarantee in the original Constitution that the jury be drawn from the “vicinage” or neighborhood of the crime.2 James Madison’s efforts to write into the Bill of Rights an express vicinage provision were rebuffed by the Senate, and the present language was adopted as a compromise.3
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Footnotes
- 1
- U.S. Const. art. III, § 2 ( “The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crime shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by law have directed.” )
- 2
- Francis H. Heller, The Sixth Amendment 25–26 (1951); see Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 93 n.35 (1970) ( “'[V]icinage’ means neighborhood, and ‘vicinage of the jury’ meant jury of the neighborhood or, in medieval England, jury of the county.” ).
- 3
- Williams, 399 U.S. at 96 (explaining that, in the final version of the Sixth Amendment, “the ‘vicinage’ requirement itself had been replaced by wording that reflected a compromise between broad and narrow definitions of that term, and that left Congress the power to determine the actual size of the ‘vicinage’ by its creation of judicial districts.” )