88 CASSELL ET AL. [Vol. 104 crime victims to assert CVRA rights “in the district court in which a defendant is being prosecuted for the crime or, if no prosecution is underway, in the district court in the district in which the crime occurred.”'® The Department contends that this language refers quite narrowly to the “period of time between the filing of a complaint and the initiation of formal charges.”'®° In support of its position, the Department cites a Fourth Circuit case interpreting the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, which held that a “prosecution” for purposes of that Amendment does not begin when a criminal complaint is filed.'°’ In OLC’s view, the venue provision’s direction that victims should assert nghts when “no prosecution is underway” applies only to the limited time between when the Government files a complaint against a defendant and some later point when the “prosecution” actually begins. OLC notes that the filing of a complaint triggers an initial appearance, where crime victims can have important interests at stake, such as the right to be heard about a defendant’s release on bail. OLC believes it is only to such post-complaint, yet pre-indictment, proceedings (i.c., the initial appearance) that the venue provision’s “no-prosecution-underway” language covers. As a preliminary matter, OLC’s interpretation of the word “prosecution” in the Department’s narrow construction of the venue provision is a twisted one, at odds with the way that term is conventionally used. The filing of a complaint is typically viewed as the start of a criminal prosecution. For example, the leading criminal procedure hombook states that “[w]ith the filing of the complaint, the arrestee officially becomes a ‘defendant’ in a criminal prosecution.”'® Moreover, having specifically rejected the filing of the criminal complaint as the starting point for a “prosecution” within the CVRA’s venue provision, OLC refuses to consider the implications of its alterative starting po