Defendant's Written Statement

Defendant's Written Statement

Rule 20(a) makes a transfer depend on several conditions, and the first of them puts the decision in the defendant's hands. Under Rule 20(a)(1), the defendant must state in writing a wish to plead guilty or nolo contendere and to waive trial in the district where the indictment, information, or complaint is pending. The defendant must also consent in writing to the court's disposing of the case in the transferee district, and must file the statement in the transferee district.¹ That sentence packs four components into one document: a wish to plead, a waiver of trial in the charging district, a consent to disposition in the receiving district, and a filing. Each does a separate job, and the reason for requiring all of them becomes clear once the right the defendant is giving up is in view.

The right is the one the Constitution gives an accused to be tried in the state and district where the crime was committed, found in Article III, Section 2 and the Sixth Amendment.² In Platt v. Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., the Court recalled that trial in the vicinity of the crime is a safeguard against the unfairness and hardship involved when an accused is prosecuted in a remote place.³ A protection that exists for the accused is the accused's to give up, and courts treat the venue right as a personal privilege that the accused may waive.⁴ That explains why the first Rule 20 condition belongs to the defendant: the government and the court cannot surrender the defendant's venue right for the defendant.

The ability to waive does not make the waiver automatic. Singer v. United States, a case about waiving jury trial, explains the general principle by example. The power to waive a protection does not ordinarily carry a right to compel the opposite, so a defendant may waive venue protections in some circumstances but cannot in all cases compel transfer to another district. Such waivers may be subjected to reasonable procedural regulation, and Rule 20 is the procedure that governs waiver of trial in a particular district.⁵ The written statement is therefore a regulated waiver. It starts the transfer process, but the defendant's signature alone does not finish it.

The first two components work together to tie the transfer to a plea. The wish to plead guilty or nolo contendere supplies the premise of the whole rule, because the case may leave the scene of the alleged crime only on the footing that no trial will occur and no local jury will be asked to decide anything. A defendant who plans to contest guilt cannot truthfully make that statement, so a defendant who wants the case moved nearer home for a trial finds Rule 20(a) closed. The waiver of trial in the charging district is the act that actually surrenders the venue protection. Putting it in writing makes the surrender deliberate, since a writing is hard to mistake for a casual remark, and it leaves the transferee court a record to rely on when it later takes the plea.

The third component, the consent to disposition in the transferee district, can look like a repeat of the waiver, but it covers different ground. Waiving trial in the charging district gives up the right to be tried there and says nothing about which other court will take over. The consent fills that gap by authorizing the transferee court to dispose of the case, which includes accepting the plea and imposing sentence. The contested route shows what the consent adds. In United States v. Marcello, a defendant who had himself moved for a change of venue argued that he had not agreed to the particular district the court assigned, and the court held that his waiver took effect when the motion was granted and that he had no right to insist on any particular district.⁶ Rule 20 requires the defendant's own written consent to the transferee court's disposition, so the choice of the receiving district does not rest with a court alone. A later section of this chapter returns to that contrast.

The fourth component, the filing, fixes where the paper must land. The statement is filed in the transferee district, the court that will take the plea, and not in the charging district, which will only later send its file along.⁷ Filing there puts the defendant's choice directly before the judge who must act on it. The usual error on a problem is to treat an oral wish, however sincere, as if it satisfied the condition, when the rule asks for a writing that is on file in the receiving district.

Because the statement is the defendant's own act, invoking Rule 20 has consequences outside the rule. In Strunk v. United States, a defendant serving a state sentence admitted guilt to an FBI agent and said he intended to demand a speedy trial under Rule 20.⁸ The government explained part of a 10-month delay by saying it had postponed prosecution because of that reference, and the Court concluded on that record that the defendant was responsible for a large part of the delay.⁹ The opinion reports only his stated intention, so it does not show what a sufficient statement looks like. It supports a narrower point: the process begins with the defendant, and time spent waiting on a defendant's Rule 20 request can count against that defendant when delay is later alleged.

Even a flawless statement completes only the first condition. The text of Rule 20(a)(1) ends with the word "and," which signals that further conditions follow,¹⁰ and the defendant, as Singer explains, cannot in every case compel a transfer by waiving.¹¹ The defendant has said yes to leaving the charging district and to being handled in the receiving one. The next question is who else must say yes before the file moves.