Whether a court may conclusively determine through judicial notice that the government has satisfied its burden to prove an essential jurisdictional element of a criminal offense, or whether that element must be submitted to a jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt

No question identified. : and denied Mr. Silvers’s timely rehearing petition on March 25, 2025, see App. B. Absent an extension, the petition for a writ of certiorari would be due on or before June 23, 2025. This application complies with Rules 13.5 and 30.2 because it is being filed more than ten days before the petition is due. This Court has jurisdiction over the case pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1254(1). 1. This case presents an important question regarding a criminal defendant’s right to a jury trial guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution: whether a court may conclusively determine through judicial notice that the government has satisfied its burden to prove that the physical location where an alleged crime took place is within the “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States” when that is an essential jurisdictional element of the offense, or whether that question must instead be submitted to a jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. 2. In November 2018, Mr. Silvers was indicted on seven counts for alleged violations of federal law, four of which included as an element that the crime took place within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1(b) (first-degree murder); 1113 (attempted murder); 2261(a)(1) (domestic violence); 2262(a)(1) (violation of a protective order). Following an evidentiary hearing prior to trial, the district court took judicial notice of the fact that the location where the charged offenses allegedly took place—Fort Campbell, a military base located on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee—was within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. At trial, the jury was instructed that the location where the charged offenses allegedly took place was within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and that if they found beyond a reasonable doubt that the offenses occurred at the alleged location, that was sufficient to find that those offenses occurred within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. In December 2022, Mr. Silvers was convicted and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Silvers appealed, arguing, in relevant part, that the district court erred in taking conclusive judicial notice of the fact that Fort Campbell was within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States and thereby removing an essential jurisdictional element from the purview of the jury. 3. In February 2025, the Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that the existence of special maritime or territorial jurisdiction was a question of law that turned on legislative facts that may be judicially noticed by the court rather than found by a jury. In so holding, the Sixth Circuit recognized that the jurisdictional requirement that a crime take place within the United States’s special maritime and territorial jurisdiction is an essential element of four of the crimes with which Mr. Silvers was charged and so must be proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. App. A at 12. Notwithstanding that determination, however, the Sixth Circuit went on to find that this jurisdictional element was actually made up of 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.” Jd. The court concluded that the second inquiry was a question of fact that must be submitted to the jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but that the first inquiry was a legal question for the court to resolve that turned on legislative, rather than adjudicative, facts because it depended “on the immutable, universal fact of the jurisdictional character of a particular location.” Jd. at 20. And, as a legislative fact, the Sixth Circuit concluded that the existence of special maritime or territorial j