Page:Smith v. United States (2023).pdf/6

2 StrikeLines’ data and invited readers to message him and “ ‘see what ree[f]’ ” coordinates StrikeLines had discovered. 22 F. 4th 1236, 1239 (CA11 2022) (case below). When contacted by StrikeLines, Smith offered to remove his social-media posts and fix the company’s security issues in exchange for “ ‘one thing’ ”: the coordinates of certain “ ‘deep grouper spots’ ” that he had apparently been unable to obtain from the website. Ibid. The ensuing negotiations over grouper coordinates eventually failed, leading StrikeLines to contact law-enforcement authorities.

Smith was indicted in the Northern District of Florida for, among other charges, theft of trade secrets. See 18 U. S. C. §1832(a)(1). Before trial, he moved to dismiss the indictment for lack of venue, citing the Constitution’s Venue Clause, Art. III, §2, cl. 3, and its Vicinage Clause, Amdt. 6. He argued that trial in the Northern District of Florida was improper because he had accessed the data from Mobile (in the Southern District of Alabama) and the servers storing StrikeLines’ coordinates were located in Orlando (in the Middle District of Florida). The District Court concluded that the jury needed to resolve factual disputes related to venue, and it therefore denied the motion to dismiss without prejudice. After the jury returned a verdict of guilty under §1832(a)(1), Smith moved for a judgment of acquittal based on improper venue. See Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 29. The District Court denied the motion, reasoning that StrikeLines felt the effects of the crime at its headquarters in the Northern District of Florida.

On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit held that venue was improper on the trade secrets charge, but it disagreed with Smith that this error barred reprosecution. It concluded that the “remedy for improper venue is vacatur of the conviction, not acquittal or dismissal with prejudice,” and that the “Double Jeopardy [C]lause is not implicated by a retrial in a proper venue.” 22 F. 4th, at 1244.