Mike Fox and Matthew Cavedon
San Francisco-based FBI agents flew to Seattle to question Ahmad Abouammo at his home. They suspected Mr. Abouammo, a former Twitter employee, had disclosed a Saudi dissident’s private Twitter account information to an associate of a Saudi royal. The government alleged that during the meeting at his home, Abouammo went upstairs, created a false invoice, and emailed it to the agents waiting downstairs. Abouammo was indicted in the Northern District of California for falsifying records and convicted following a jury trial.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed Abouammo’s convictions, holding that venue for the prosecution was proper in the Northern District of California because the statute he violated “expressly contemplates the effect of influencing the action of another.” Accordingly, the venue could be proper in either the district where Abouammo created the false invoice or “the district of the expressly contemplated effect—where the investigation [this] was intended to stymie [was] ongoing or contemplated.”
Abouammo could be tried in the Northern District of California because the invoice he made “was received by FBI agents working out of the FBI’s San Francisco office.” This was so even if Abouammo never “specifically foresaw effects” of his actions happening in California.
The Ninth Circuit’s decision allows for anyone who allegedly falsifies documents to be tried in any district where the relevant government investigators are based, even if the defendant has never been to that district and intends no harm to reach it. Virtually every federal entity has investigating agents in the nation’s capital who could be assigned to virtually any federal falsification inquiry. In effect, the government argues that it can turn the District of Columbia, or any other district that hosts a significant portion of the federal bureaucracy (such as San Francisco), into the universal venue for federal criminal trials.
Cato filed an amicus brief supporting Abouammo’s cert petition. Now that the Supreme Court has granted review, Cato has again filed an amicus brief. In our brief, we argue that the government’s plea for effectively unbounded prosecutorial forum shopping is incompatible with the original meaning of the Constitution’s provisions limiting venue (where the trial occurs) and vicinage (who sits on the jury). The Ninth Circuit’s ruling invites prosecutors to weaponize these rules to select favorable jury pools. Furthermore, by decoupling a trial from its locale, the government strips the local community of its voice and grants prosecutors the power to effectively skew the outcome of a case before a single juror is even seated.
Abouammo carried out his crime entirely in his Seattle home. Accordingly, the Western District of Washington was the only constitutionally permissible venue for prosecuting him for those acts.