Removal of Defendants in Federal Criminal Procedure

A UNIQUE phase of federal criminal jurisprudence has been the manner of bringing to court a defendant who has been apprehended in a judicial district other than that in which the case is to be tried. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees to the accused the right to a trial in the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. Consequently, if he is discovered in another district, he may not be tried there. A way must be found to transport him to the proper jurisdiction. The importance of this aspect of the administration of federal criminal law has gradually grown with the vast territorial expansion of the United States, as well as with the prodigious increase in the number of criminal offenses cognizable in the courts of the United States. The removal of a defendant from one judicial district to another is in principal far different from foreign extradition, and even from interstate rendition. In the case of foreign extradition, two distinct sovereignties are involved. In the case of interstate rendition, a state of the Union, clothed with certain aspects of sovereignty, is requested to surrender a person for trial by another state. In the case of removal of a defendant from one federal judicial district to another for trial in a federal court, only a single sovereign is concerned. The problem is merely one of transporting the defendant from one territorial subdivision to another.