Without getting into a great debate, is there anything different about the southern district of New York with regards to mandate or operations? They seem to come up frequently as of late. Does it have anything to do with New York being a financial center?
The Southern District of New York covers New York City. Where a certain person of interest has their seat of business.
Nitpick. Manhatten. Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan counties. Brooklyn and Queens are in the Eastern District
In the broader picture, a lot of people and companies have business dealings in Manhattan. It’s the financial center, and center of a zillion other things.
Like his nibs would be caught dead in Brooklyn or Queens.
Moderator Note
Let’s avoid political jabs in GQ. No warning issued.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
As others have pointed out, the fact that it covers Manhattan means a lot of high-profile stuff gets prosecuted there, from major white-collar crimes to mafia RICO cases and political corruption.
The SDNY is seen as something of a first-among-equals in the federal judicial system, and a job there is often a stepping-stone to senior positions in the DOJ.
From what I understand, you can file your suit in any court in the Federal system where the company is headquartered or has significant operations. (used to be you could file in ANY federal court, which is why Marshall, TX’s federal court handled something like 25% of the patent cases in the country)
The Southern District of NY is just the one that’s convenient to NYC.
Parts of the EDNY is right across the river, and still part of NYC. It just doesn’t include Manhattan, but that’s no obstacle to filing most cases there.
Crimes must be prosecuted in the district where they occur. We’re not talking about civil cases.
If the radio report I heard yesterday was accurate, for financial crimes if a customer lives in Brooklyn you can file there.
Like many states, New York is divided up into multiple federal districts. How each state are divided (or not) into districts is set forth under federal law, specifically 28 USC §§ 81-131.
28 USC § 112 sets forth how New York is divided into four districts, the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western. Subsection (b) provides: “The Southern District comprises the counties of Bronx, Dutchess, New York, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, and Westchester and concurrently with the Eastern District, the waters within the Eastern District.” Essentially, Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and the near downstate counties.
The Eastern District is Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County) and Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk Counties). The Northern District contains Albany, Syracuse, Utica, Binghamton and surrounding counties, while the Western District contains Rochester, Buffalo and the Western counties of New York.
The SDNY has many of the high-profile financial and terrorism cases, while the EDNY has a lot of big racketeering cases, with the El Chapo case being the most notable recent case.
How’s that work if the crimes are nationwide or at least geographically spread out? Like say a Mafia-related case where they operated in all five boroughs? Does the prosecution get to choose at that point between the Southern and Eastern Districts?
Yes. Defendants sometimes file motions to move the case, but such motions are not usually granted.
Here’s a whole article about it for those who want more info.
Short answer:
I’m sure in practice there’s a lot of internal politics over which office gets (or has) to prosecute a particular case. But generally, if one office has a lot of experience in a particular type of crime (even if it’s just ‘cases with huge media attention’), it makes sense to steer those kinds of cases to that office. Not only the prosecutors but also the judges and others will have more experience and be better able to handle things.
[No offense to federal judges in the Western District of NY, but I’m sure that federal courts in Manhattan have more experience with running a trial where 30 reporters want to sit in every day]
I would at least like to know what a “nib” is. Urban dictionary is not giving me satisfactory results. PM if necessary.
I had to look it up too. I found this:
Potentially, there could also be an element that the DC office is more easily watched and controlled, so for purposes of non-interference it may have made sense to refer issues to the SDNY office.
That is, purely, speculation though.
But otherwise, as others have said, it’s a major group due to sitting on the financial center of the country and serves as the correct jurisdiction for many if not most financial crimes that the President or his associates might have committed (if they did in fact do so).