Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure in the United States

Legal Materials

Unannotated editions of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (FRCrP) are posted free by the U.S. Courts and the Legal Information Institue. The LII also posts the Rules in eBook format.

Annotated editions of the FRCrP are published at the end of Title 18 of the United States Code Annotated (USCA) and the United States Code Service (USCS). Lightly annotated editions are available in O’Connor’s Federal Criminal Rules & Codes Plus, with commentary and Committee Notes (Jones McLure), in the “Criminal” rules pamphlet at the end of Moore’s Federal Practice, with Committee Notes (Lexis/Matthew Bender) and in the softcover Volume 3D of Federal Practice and Procedure(West), with Commentary. An unannotated print edition is available in West’s Federal Criminal Code and Rules.

Proposed and recently-approved changes to the Rules are posted on the Pending Rules Amendments page of the Federal Judiciary web site. Generally, new rules go into effect on December 1.

Federal Procedure Rules

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (FRCrP) and the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) are each published as independent volumes. The FRCrP is included in Federal Criminal Code and Rules and O’Connor’s Federal Criminal Rules & Codes (Jones McClure). What’s more, all three rules sets are included at the end of Moore’s Federal Practice set, in the Moore’s Federal Rules Pamphlet, and in the Federal Procedure Rules Service at the end of the Federal Procedure set. As if that wasn’t enough, they are also published at the end of Title 28 of the United States Code, and they are posted free online and in eBook format by the Legal Information Institute.

For better searching, you can use one of the online U.S. Code databases (see “United States Code”), or one of the special data bases just for the Federal Rules.

See Also

Criminal Law
Federal Court Rules
Federal Procedure Rules
Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure
Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Federal Rules of Evidence
United States Code