All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk Q and A style. You can check us out, by the way, at Lawyer Talk podcast. I'm going to jump right into it. This is a question that came on LawyerTalkPodcast.com from Jeff. This question is can you be charged and brought to trial in a different county, parish and district where the crime is said to have been committed? And like so many questions in the legal system, this one is a yes, no, maybe type answer. Here's what I mean by that. And by the way, I'm going to focus on Ohio because Ohio is sort of, this is the law. I know it's where I practice, but I think it's probably similar in most places. What you're really talking about here, what Jeff is really talking about is something called venue. And venue is this term that's used to say where should the trial be held in most, almost all cases. In criminal cases, trial is held where the crime is committed. Now that can get a little bit wishy washy at times. Say you've got a murder case and the murder happens in Franklin County, Ohio. That's in Columbus, Ohio. Well, that's easy because the crime is committed in Franklin county and it's obvious venue will be in Franklin County. But what if it's a, let's say it's a car theft that's followed by a high speed police chase. So somebody goes down to one of the counties in southern Ohio and they steal a car and then they hightail it north and they drive through Franklin county while the sheriffs are following him in high speed pursuit. That gets a little bit dicey, doesn't it? Because you've got theoretically there's a crime in every single county all the way up. And here's how that works. Venue could be almost in any of those counties wherever any part of the crime is committed to, typically you could have venue there. And then what if you get to this other weird situation? I've represented lots of folks. It turns out that people like to go steal things like four wheelers and break into garages and steal side by sides or even cars or other, maybe a bulldozer or two. There's been lots of those cases around Ohio over the years, but they're not limited to one county. They go down to one of the counties in south of Columbus and they steal something and they go over to another county east or west of Columbus, they steal something. And now we've got this huge conglomerate of cases and there gets the same rule is true. So somebody could be charged in any one of those counties with all of the thefts. But then we run into situations where prosecutors and those kinds say, no, I want it here. And another prosecutor says, I want it over here. And that could be true, too. The prosecutors in one county could prosecute their case, and the other county, they're prosecuting that case. And I've had to deal with this several times where I'm calling up prosecutors in Licking county out east of Columbus, in Madison county out west of Columbus, and Pickaway county down south, trying to negotiate deals and trying to get it all consolidated together. And most of the time we can do it, but not always. So it can be a little confusing like that. And then you've got these crimes that seemingly don't really have a location. What if you get ripped off and it's in the ether, it's bank fraud or something? You could say, well, that crime occurred where my bank is. You could say that crime occurred where I am because I'm the victim. And that's typically what would happen. So it's not always clear exactly who's going to pick it, but it is pretty clear that venue happens where the crime is committed. Now, we've talked in the show before, and I'll just cover it briefly. Again, there are situations where venue changes, where we say, look, we don't want venue here in this county. We want to move it. And I get this question all the time from clients. They'll call and say, look, I'm charged with this crime. I'm in a small county, Ohio. Everything's corrupt down here. We got Boss Hogg in charge and Roscoe P. Coltrane is doing his biddings. And this is, I got to get out of this county. I want to move it right away. My answer is always the same, is like, we probably can't move it. And people are surprised by this. I'm not criticizing people for being surprised because it makes sense. Look, this isn't fair here. I want to move this to Franklin county or a different county. It's not that easy. In order to change venue, you have to basically establish you can't get a fair trial in that county. When you file a motion for a change of venue, a lot of times that most of the time that is not granted at all. There's been a few famous cases where venue was changed, but most of the time it's really difficult to change venue. You can go back and check our backlogs and maybe I can do a full episode of it. But on one, at some point, but most of the time. You can't just change venue. You have to be able to establish that it's impossible to get a fair trial where you are. That's what you have to show. And if you can't show that, you're stuck. That's just what it is. And I guess we could talk briefly, like, what kind of evidence are we looking for? We're trying to look for, like, huge news attention, media attention, or comments. If you've got a small county and it's been everywhere and the news has so much influenced the outcome that it can't be fair, then that's going to be the type of argument you can make. But it's not always true. Just because there's been a lot of media attention doesn't mean that you're getting a change of venue. Usually what courts do, there's something called a fiction. We call them legal fictions. And a lot of times legal fictions are like, well, we're just going to do this and act like it's okay and act like everything's fine and this happens. I know it sounds horrible, but it does happen a lot in the legal system, and the system bakes in room for it. But we ask judges often ask jurors in high publicity cases. I've tried several in my career. There's been a lot of media attention. Mr. Jones, do you think you can set aside anything you've gleaned or learned from that media attention and still give Mr. Smith over here, the defendant, a fair trial? Yes. Okay, that's good enough for me. And, you know, we stand up on the behalf of the defendant and be like, all right, hold on a second. What have you actually learned from the media? We try to dig into it, but unless you get a juror to actually say, look, I can't be fair, and then most of the time, what would happen is that juror would just be excused and another one would come up who say he could be fair. So say you can't get a jury seated because everybody's heard about it and everybody says they can't be fair. Well, maybe you can get a change of venue on the fly like that. But most of the time it just doesn't happen like that. Sometimes, I guess if it's a little bit different than change of venue, sometimes you got local players involved in the very case that's getting prosecuted. A colleague of mine is in one of these right now where somebody in the local sheriff's office is being prosecuted and a former prosecutor's involved. The judge in the county. I mean, everybody knows what's going on. So what typically happens there is they'll bring in a special prosecutor, somebody outside that county to actually prosecute the case. And a lot of times they'll bring in a visiting judge. So visiting judges are typically guys or gals, judges who have retired and they still want to be judges. So they get on the visiting circuit and they'll come in and sit by assignment. The high supreme court will say, hey, look, judge, you want to come in and sit on. Yeah, sure, I'll come sit on this case. I got nothing better to do. I'm enjoying it. I'll meet some new lawyers. And it sounds like a fun case. So that judge will come sit. And that could happen in the county where the crime occurred. The case of my colleague, though, that venue is actually getting moved because the judge says, well, I'd just rather do it in my county, so we're going to try it down here. And so you sort of get the best of both worlds. You're out of the county and a different judge and a special prosecutor from the Ohio attorney general may come in and prosecute the case. So you sort of eliminate any potential of local bias. Not quite a change of venue, but close enough. So, look, I hope this answered your question. It's a great question. And again, that came in on lawyerertalkpodcast.com interface, by the way. I can't. I'm happy to answer questions like this and topics like this. I can't. I can't talk about your case, though. I can't give you legal advice in your case, particularly if it's not in Ohio and you probably already have a lawyer anyway. It's the best place to go to get your questions answered. But if you got a topic, if you got something else you want me to COVID leave it in the comments or shoot me a question. Lawyer talk podcast off the record, on the air.