Determination of whether a location is within the special maritime & territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.; Taking judicial notice instead of submitting the question to the jury; Apprendi v New Jersey; United States v Gaudin; Whether the question of a location’s jurisdictional character is a legislative or an adjudicative fact; Juror bias; Voir dire; FedRCrimP 24(a)(1)

In an issue of first impression in this circuit, the court held that whether the U.S.’s special maritime or territorial jurisdiction existed is a legislative, not an adjudicative fact, and thus, the jurisdictional issue is a legal one. As a result, the district court did not err by taking judicial notice that Fort Campbell was within the U.S.'s special maritime and territorial jurisdiction rather than submitting the question to the jury. Defendant-Silvers was convicted of killing his wife, an active member of the Army, while she was on Fort Campbell military base. He was sentenced to life in prison. He first argued on appeal “that the district court erred in taking judicial notice of the fact that Fort Campbell was within” the U.S.’s special maritime and territorial jurisdiction. He asserted that the issue should have instead been submitted to the jury. The court found that the jurisdictional element of crimes such as those at issue in this case include “two separate inquiries: first, whether the parcel of land falls within the United States’ special maritime and territorial jurisdiction; and second, whether the alleged offense occurred within that area.” It agreed with Silvers “that the second inquiry is a question of fact that, under Gaudin and Apprendi, must be submitted to the jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But the first inquiry—the pure question of a location’s jurisdictional character—is a legal question, one which turns on legislative, not adjudicative, fact.” Thus, a district court may “direct a jury to take judicial notice of the existence of that jurisdiction without violating the constitutional command set forth by Gaudin and Apprendi.” Turning to Silvers’s claim that a juror who had not revealed that he once served in the Navy was biased, the court was not convinced that the district court abused its discretion in “finding that Juror 5—who had never worked for the Army, and therefore did not answer in the affirmative when asked if he had worked for the Army—answered the [district] court’s questions honestly[.]” The court rejected Silvers’s contention that the voir dire questioning “was constitutionally inadequate. The district court asked a detailed question about potential jurors’ prior involvement with the Army in order to expose any impermissible bias in favor of the victim due to her status as an active-duty member of the Army. That [its] question focused on the particular branch of the military in which ]the victim] served was not an abuse of the district court’s broad discretion in conducting voir dire.” Finally, the court held that Silvers’s mandatory life sentence was “constitutional under binding Supreme Court precedent[.]” Affirmed.