Why your case is in federal court, not state court
If federal agents arrested you in Fresno County, or a grand jury in the Eastern District named you in an indictment, your case will be heard in a United States district court, not a California state courthouse. The reason is one short statute, which provides:
"The district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States."
The word exclusive does the work. When the charge is a violation of federal law, no state court shares the case. The prosecution is brought by the United States Attorney's Office, the judge is a federal district judge, and sentencing runs under federal law. Our Eastern District of California page maps the whole district, and our federal criminal process hub walks through each stage from arrest to sentencing.
A caution that applies to every page on this site. This page lists no penalties. Where this site shows a penalty, it is a statutory maximum or guideline range, never a prediction about any one person. The facts of a case change everything.
The Eastern District, and why your hearing is in Fresno
Congress created the Eastern District of California as one of four federal judicial districts in the state and fixed four places where the court holds sessions. The statute provides:
"Court for the Eastern District shall be held at Bakersfield, Fresno, Redding, and Sacramento."
That one sentence explains the map. The district stretches from the Oregon border country in the north to Kern County in the south, and Fresno is the court site for the southern half of that territory. If your papers name Fresno, your hearings happen on Tulare Street, not in Sacramento. If your papers name one of the other three sites, go there instead. Our Sacramento page covers the district headquarters to the north. Check the caption of your papers before you drive anywhere, because appearing at the wrong courthouse on the morning of a hearing is a preventable problem.
The courthouse on Tulare Street
The federal courthouse in Fresno is the Robert E. Coyle Federal Courthouse at 2500 Tulare Street, Room 1501, Fresno, CA 93721. The court lists 559-499-5600 as the Fresno contact number. Your papers should tell you the courtroom or suite number along with the date and time. If they do not, or if the notice is unclear, call the number above rather than guessing. Each court site in the district runs its own calendar and its own security line, and time spent in the wrong place is time you do not get back.
One Fresno detail surprises people from the south. The district also staffs courthouses at Bakersfield and Yosemite, but filings for both are submitted through Fresno, in the electronic filing system or at the Fresno clerk window. Redding filings go through Sacramento instead. So the Fresno clerk office is the hub for the whole southern end of the district, and a case that started near Bakersfield can properly land you in front of a judge on Tulare Street.
The nine counties served from Fresno
The court states its own jury and jurisdictional reach in plain terms:
"The Fresno court has jurisdiction over the counties of Tuolumne, Merced, Mariposa, Madera, Fresno, Inyo, Kings, Tulare and Kern."
If you were arrested, searched, or served papers in one of those nine counties, Fresno is very likely where your case will be heard. The list runs from the Sierra foothills of Tuolumne and Mariposa counties, through the farm belt of Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, and Tulare counties, out to Inyo County on the Nevada line and Kern County in the south. The rest of the district, the northern counties from Alpine to Yuba, runs through Sacramento. This county split is the fastest way to confirm that Fresno is your court site, but your papers control. If the caption names a different site, follow the caption.
Getting through the door on your court date
Plan for a federal building, not an ordinary errand downtown. Bring a photo ID and every page of the summons, indictment, or notice you received, and arrive early enough to clear screening with time left to find your courtroom. Weapons, cameras, and recording devices are restricted in federal courthouses, so leave anything questionable behind. The court posts directions, parking, and transit information on its courthouses page, so check that page the night before rather than assuming street parking near Tulare Street will cooperate. If you were arrested and released with a date to appear, read our page on federal arrest before that date so the first appearance does not surprise you.
Who prosecutes a Fresno federal case
The court and the prosecution are separate. The judge decides motions, runs the trial, and imposes sentence. The charges are brought by the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California, which covers the full sweep of counties from the northern border to Kern County. The agents who investigated the case, whether from the FBI, the DEA, Homeland Security Investigations, or another federal agency, usually report into the same district. No attorney, judge, prosecutor, or client is named anywhere on this page, and that is deliberate. What matters is the office and the process, not any one person.
What happens first, and what comes after
The first decisions in a federal case come fast. At the first appearance the judge addresses release, and detention fights are litigated under the standards explained on our detention hearings page. If the case proceeds by indictment, read our indictment page. Sentencing, if it comes to that, runs under federal law described on our federal sentencing page. And if the trial court gets the law wrong, the appeal goes to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the circuit Congress assigned to California, since the courts of appeals have jurisdiction of appeals from final decisions of district courts. Appeals run on strict deadlines measured from the judgment, so read our federal appeals page early rather than after time has run.