# Can a state punish you for doing something that is legal in another state but not in their state? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 8, 2019, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-state-punish-you-for-doing-something-that-is-legal-in-another-state-but-not-in-their-state/833680 "2019-05-08T19:50:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 25
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-state-punish-you-for-doing-something-that-is-legal-in-another-state-but-not-in-their-state/833680/25 "2019-05-09T00:20:17Z")
This is the rule: > [@Strassheim v. Daily](#): > > Acts done outside a jurisdiction, but intended to produce and producing detrimental effects within it, justify a State in punishing the cause of the harm as if he had been present at the effect, if the State should succeed in getting … [the accused] within its power… [T]he criminal need not do within the State every act necessary to complete the crime. If he does there an overt act which is and is intended to be a material step toward accomplishing the crime, and then absents himself from the State and does the rest elsewhere, he becomes a fugitive from justice… There was a West Virginia case where a man abducted his girlfriend from her workplace in West Virginia and transported her to Ohio where he raped her. West Virginia ruled it had jurisdiction to prosecute the rape (clearly it had jurisdiction for kidnapping) because a substantial amount of an element of the crime: fear or forcible compulsion, occurred in the State of West Virginia. As far as a law against eyebrow plucking, it would be difficult for a state to argue that out of state eyebrow plucking was both intended to produce and actually produces “detrimental effects” within the state. Even if it were to argue that eyebrow plucking was against the public health, morals, and decency or that eyebrow plucking parlors invited crime and debauchery, these effects would be borne by the state that has made it legal. For the same reason, conspiracy to commit eyebrow plucking would not work as well. The root of conspiracy is an agreement to commit a crime against the state. As eyebrow plucking in State B is not a crime against State A, State A could not allege that anyone conspired to commit a crime against it. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-state-punish-you-for-doing-something-that-is-legal-in-another-state-but-not-in-their-state/833680)._