Change of venue due to pretrial publicity

Criminal defendants in high-profile cases sometimes move for a change of venue claiming that prejudicial pretrial publicity has so tainted the jury pool that a fair trial is very unlikely.  Such motions are rarely granted.  The law places the burden of proving that a change of venue is necessary on the defendant, who has to prove that:

• The publicity is widespread.
• At least some of the publicity is inaccurate and inflammatory—almost no amount of temperate, accurate journalistic coverage will justify a change of venue.
• The publicity has prejudiced the defendant by causing widespread belief of the defendant’s guilt within the potential jury pool.

Also, only in an extreme case should a trial judge grant a change of venue on the basis of pretrial publicity without attempting the jury selection process—which will almost always show that a fair jury can be impaneled.

For a recent opinion in a very highly-publicized case denying a change of venue due to pretrial publicity, see United States v. Lindh, 212 F. Supp. 2d 541 (E.D.Va. 2002) (defendant was an American citizen captured in Afghanistan charged with aiding anti-American forces).  Actually, a change of venue in a nationally-publicized case is particularly unlikely because the level of publicity means that potential jurors in other judicial districts have probably heard just as much about the case as have potential jurors in the original district.  A change of venue is somewhat more likely in cases where there has been a high level of publicity in the original district, but not much publicity in other districts to which the case might be transferred—that is, cases of intense local interest whose news value is relatively slight outside the original district.