It is further provided (Amend. VI) that the trial in criminal prosecutions is to be "by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law." This is analogous to a rule of the common law formerly recognized in England requiring that in criminal prosecutions the jury shall consist of persons summoned from the vicinity where the crime was committed;1 but such a rule no longer prevails in the states, and it is usually left to be determined by statute in what county of the state a criminal trial shall be held. It is generally required that, save where a crime is continuous in its nature and has been partly committed in two or more counties, or has been commenced in one county and the final result accomplished in another, the trial must be in the county of the commission of the crime. It is no longer regarded as desirable or even expedient that persons familiar with the circumstances of the crime shall serve as jurors for the trial of the accused.

But there is a paragraph in the federal constitution as first adopted requiring criminal trials in the federal courts to be by jury, in this language: " The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed " (Art. Ill, § 2, ¶ 3). As no federal district includes two states or parts of two states, this provision is complied with if the crime is tried by the proper federal court for the district in which the crime is committed; and Congress has made direction as to crimes against the United States not committed in any state (as, for instance, on the high seas) by providing that if the crime is committed outside the limits of any of the districts, the trial shall be had in the district in which the accused is arrested, or if arrested outside of any of the districts, then in the district into which he is first brought after being arrested. The manifest purpose is to avoid the possibility that the prosecuting officers shall select for the trial of one accused of crime some particular court or district in which they shall have a better chance of securing conviction than in some other, or that they shall unnecessarily inconvenience or oppress the accused by subjecting him to trial at a great distance from the place where the crime was committed, thus making it more difficult for him to secure the attendance of witnesses.

1 Reference is no doubt made to this rule of the common law in the complaint embodied in the Declaration of Independence that the king had deprived the colonists of the benefit of jury trial and transported them beyond the seas for trial for offences; but it is more distinctly referred to in the "Declaration of Rights" adopted by the First Continental Congress in 1774 in which this language is used: "The respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law."