Federal Violation Notices and the Central Violations Bureau

The ticket is a federal criminal charge

Most people who are cited on federal land in Nevada leave the scene holding a small multi-part form. A ranger filled it out, tore off a copy, handed it over, and drove away. It looks like a parking ticket. It is not one.

That form is a federal violation notice. It is the charging document for an offense committed on federal property, and the case it opens belongs to the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. Lake Mead National Recreation Area is administered by the National Park Service. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Conduct on either is governed by federal regulations — Title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations for Park Service land, Title 43 for the Bureau of Land Management — and enforced in federal court, not in Las Vegas Justice Court and not under the Nevada Revised Statutes.

What the Central Violations Bureau is

The Central Violations Bureau, usually written CVB, is the national processing center for violation notices issued in United States District Courts for offenses on federal property. When a ranger writes a notice, a copy goes to the CVB, which holds the record of the citation and handles payments and correspondence relating to it.

It helps to be precise about what the CVB is and is not. It is an administrative office. It does not decide whether you are guilty, it does not impose a sentence, and it is not the judge. The judge is a United States magistrate judge sitting in the District of Nevada — in Las Vegas, at the Lloyd D. George Courthouse, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. S.; in the north of the state, at the Bruce R. Thompson Courthouse in Reno. The CVB is the paperwork channel between your citation and that court.

Box A decides whether you have to appear

The single most important thing on the face of a federal violation notice is whether Box A is checked.

A citation can usually be resolved without a court appearance. But if Box A on the face of the notice is checked, an appearance is mandatory. That is not a suggestion or a default that quietly lapses if you send money instead. A mandatory appearance means the court expects you, or counsel on your behalf, in the courtroom on the date printed on the notice.

Two practical points follow. First, read your own notice. Rangers write a wide range of offenses on the same form, and what a friend’s ticket said, or what a forum post said, tells you nothing about yours. Second, check the date and the courthouse printed on it, because those are the details a person on holiday from out of state most often discovers too late.

Collateral forfeiture: paying instead of appearing

Where an appearance is not required, the mechanism that lets you resolve the case by payment is Fed. R. Crim. P. 58(d)(1). Under that rule the court “may accept a fixed-sum payment in lieu of the defendant’s appearance and end the case.” Lawyers call this collateral forfeiture.

Notice the shape of the rule. It is permissive — the court may accept such a payment. The option exists where the court has set a fixed sum for that offense and has allowed it to be handled that way. It does not exist where the notice requires an appearance. The instructions that come with your notice, and the CVB, are the place to confirm which options apply to your specific citation, including whether it can be handled by mail or online.

What paying actually means

This is the part that deserves a moment of thought, because the form’s resemblance to a parking ticket does real damage here.

Paying a federal violation notice is not settling a bill. It is a resolution of a federal criminal charge, and it ends the case under Rule 58(d)(1) without a hearing, without testimony, and without any of the facts being examined. What was written on the notice becomes the last word on the subject.

Whether that matters to you depends on things this page cannot know: what offense was charged, what the underlying facts were, what your immigration status is, whether you hold a professional or occupational license, whether you hold a security clearance, and what your employer asks about. Those are questions to put to a lawyer before you pay, not after. The one thing worth saying flatly is that the decision is a decision. Resolving a federal charge by payment is a choice with consequences, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by reflex on the drive home.

The other reason to look closely is that the ceilings are not the same everywhere. On Park Service land such as Lake Mead, 36 C.F.R. § 1.3(a) and 18 U.S.C. § 1865 set the maximum at a fine and imprisonment of not more than six months — a Class B misdemeanor, and so a petty offense under 18 U.S.C. § 19 and 18 U.S.C. § 3559(a). On Bureau of Land Management land such as Red Rock Canyon, 43 C.F.R. § 8360.0-7 allows a fine of up to $1,000 and imprisonment of up to 12 months. Twelve months is above the petty offense ceiling. Two agencies, two ceilings, on land about twenty miles apart, and the difference changes what category of charge you are looking at.

The rule you were cited under may be site-specific

On National Park Service land, the general regulations in 36 C.F.R. are not the whole picture. Each unit also has a Superintendent’s Compendium — the set of site-specific determinations, closures, restrictions and conditions the superintendent has put in place for that particular park or recreation area. Conduct that is unremarkable in one place can be prohibited a few miles away because the compendium for that unit says so.

That is worth knowing for two reasons. It explains how something you did not know was a rule became a federal charge. And it means that identifying the provision you are actually accused of violating is a step in its own right, not a formality. The notice names it in shorthand. Reading the underlying regulation or compendium entry is how you find out what the government would have to establish.

If the case goes in front of the judge

If Box A is checked, or if you decide not to resolve the citation by payment, the case is heard by a magistrate judge. Two features of that process surprise almost everyone, and both come from Fed. R. Crim. P. 58(b)(2): for a petty offense there is no right to a jury trial, and there is no right to appointed counsel for a petty offense for which counsel is not required. A person who assumed a public defender would be provided, and a jury seated, should know that before the appearance date rather than on it.

Before you decide

If you are holding a violation notice, the useful sequence is short. Find out whether Box A is checked. Note the date and the courthouse. Find out which agency’s land you were on and which regulation you are charged under. Then work out what resolving the case by payment would actually mean for you, given who you are and what you do.

Consultations at Vegas Golden Law are free, and Andrew Wong practices federal criminal defense in the District of Nevada. Nothing on this page is legal advice about your case, and no page can tell you what will happen in it. The point of reading it is to know what you are holding.