801.64.Legislative findings; 2007 Wisconsin Act 1.

Section 801.64 is not a procedural rule in the usual sense. It is a set of legislative findings attached to 2007 Wisconsin Act 1, which set venue for certain offenses in the county where the offender lives rather than where the underlying conduct occurred. The legislature explains here why it made that choice, tying it to the place-of-trial protections in Article I, section 7 of the Wisconsin Constitution and to earlier legislative practice of setting venue somewhere other than where the elements of an offense arose.

The reasoning centers on trust. The legislature describes the covered offenses as violations of the public trust that belong in the county where the offender resides, so that the people the offender interacts with daily, serves, or represents as a public official or candidate are the ones who judge guilt or innocence. It also ties this choice to the equal protection guarantee in Article I, section 1, and describes the resulting venue rule as balancing a defendant’s rights against the state’s interest in preventing and prosecuting these offenses. The Act itself lets a defendant request trial in the county where the offense occurred, which the legislature treats as a check consistent with the same constitutional protections.