Survey of change-of-venue motions in appellate court transcripts of murder trials (2000-2020): Which factors make a difference?

Abstract

A court may move the location of the trial to another jurisdiction if the jury pool is deemed biased by the judge, a legal maneuver based on a "Change of Venue" motion (CoVm). We surveyed the frequency and the factors associated with granting the motion at the state level when the defendant was charged with murder. We reviewed court transcripts of appealed murder convictions during the 2000-2020 years from Nexis. We complied a sample of 832 CoVm and conducted a nested regression analysis. We repeated the procedure with a subset of 360 CoVm for which we could identify the race of the defendant and victim. Overall, the success rate of CoVm was 23.5% but varied widely between the states. The motion was more likely to be granted in jurisdictions with smaller populations and a policeman was the victim. It was also found that Black and Latino defendants were less successful than Whites in winning CoVm. The racial disparity in CoVm decisions is especially concerning given past findings that people of color suffer heightened negative local pretrial publicity. In light of the findings, we advocate for a more uniform state legislation.