I don't see a judge in NJ or MN allowing this over a retarded case. Geno and Keanu can claim it's a massive hardship to travel and lodge themselves 1000 miles from home on their own dime.
They can always get lucky with the right judge on the undue hardship prong since there isn't a ton of case law defining it well, but just from some cursory searching it looks like courts aren't impressed by mere inconvenience or expense and are looking for something
big like potential
traumatization of a child witness, a doctor's testimony to
medical risks of travel, a shrink's testimony to the witness'
depressive symptomology and suicidal ideation being exacerbated by the stress of travel, travel to the demanding state
stripping a journalist of shield law privilege in the sending state, whether there are enforceable assurances of protection from a
credible threat to the witness' safety, or at the very least some insurmountable
familial, monetary, or job-related impasse that enforceable assurances of reasonable accommodations from the demanding state can't ameliorate.
Here we're talking about a couple of jobless Cumia hangers-on with no children to leave behind, whose "careers" already include regular travel to comedy gigs, and who have already made leisure trips to Minnesota before, so none of the usual hardships apply. The one and only thing they can try to argue is "monetary" hardship, but that's precisely why the uniform act expressly provides for compensation as a prerequisite to honoring the demanding state's certificate. If the demanding prosecutor is smart about it, they would go beyond the statutory reimbursement formula with the common practice of guaranteeing extra compensation for airfare, lodgings, food, witness time fees, etc., and making sure that this is ordered in conjunction with the Minnesota court's demanding certificate since offering that too late in the sending state's court
has been known to run into enforceability problems that the witness could use to get out of it.
You're probably right though that the low seriousness of the charge itself could weigh in Geno's favor if he contests it, because some of the cases linked above do go out of their way to stress the severity of the offenses in question when balancing whether a hardship is is "undue" enough under the circumstances. I'm just not as optimistic because the movement of "hoes mad" that got all these draconian revenge porn laws passed over the past decade is still something of a cause célèbre right up the alley of judges moving the request from one blue state to another blue state, particularly when the very nature of revenge porn is especially likely to cross state lines. If this were a charge for jaywalking or spitting on a sidewalk within one state, different story.
I think it's questionable they even have personal jurisdiction over him, unless he has some other contacts with Minnesota than someone sending him an unsolicited nude.
I think the MN judge would almost certainly issue it but @AnOminous brings up a good point, I'm not sure that the judge in NJ would say they have sufficient contacts with Minnesota to domesticate a subpoena.
Leaving aside whether Geno's months of appearances on Aaron's Minnesota-based show and receiving multiple payments for that work from Aaron's Minnesota-registered entity constituted sufficient minimum contacts for personal jurisdiction, none of that should be relevant because the uniform act process is not an exercise of long-arm jurisdiction by a Minnesota court in the first place. It instead stems from the New Jersey legislature's own decision to direct its own courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over its own residents if and when Minnesota requests it in a manner compliant with New Jersey's own statute.
The uniform act itself was a reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in
Minder v. Georgia, which taken alone would prohibit compulsory process against Geno for the very personal jurisdiction reasons you mention, and that problem could only be circumvented with an interstate compact like the one New Jersey voluntarily joined. A few decades later, the Supreme Court upheld this solution because it is technically the sending state exercising jurisdiction over someone within its borders, not the demanding state reaching out beyond its borders:
While temporarily in Florida, respondent was summoned to appear at a hearing to determine whether he should be delivered into the custody of a New York official to be taken to New York to testify in a grand jury proceeding. This procedure, and adequate safeguards to protect persons subject to it, were established in Florida by the enactment of the Uniform Law to Secure the Attendance of Witnesses from Within or Without a State in Criminal Proceedings, which had been enacted also in New York, 39 other States and Puerto Rico.
In Kentucky v. Dennison, 24 How. 66, Mr. Chief Justice Taney, speaking of the obligation imposed by the Constitution upon the Governor of Ohio to deliver to Kentucky one accused of violation of the criminal laws of Kentucky, called attention "to the obvious policy and necessity of this provision to preserve harmony between States, and order and law within their respective borders. . . ." 24 How. at 65 U. S. 103. The same "policy and necessity" underlie the measure adopted by Florida and forty-two other jurisdictions. Unless there is some provision in the United States Constitution which clearly prevents States from accomplishing this end by the means chosen, this Court must sustain the Uniform Act. The absence of a provision in the United States Constitution specifically granting power to the States to legislate respecting interstate rendition of witnesses presents no bar.
The Supreme Court of Florida held that, inasmuch as what was ordered was to be carried on in a foreign jurisdiction, the Florida courts could not constitutionally be given jurisdiction to order it (citing Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714). However, the Florida courts had immediate personal jurisdiction over respondent by virtue of his presence within that State. Insofar as the Fourteenth Amendment is concerned, this gave the Florida courts constitutional jurisdiction to order an act even though that act is to be performed outside of the State. See Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U. S. 280; Restatement, Conflict of Laws, § 94.
New York v. O'Neil, 359 U.S. 1 (1959)
