Title pretty much says it all but to illustrate take the following hypothetical*:
President Bush, during the State of the Union address, pulls out a gun and shoots Ted Kennedy. Assume, for whatever reason, Congress is slow and/or refuses to impeach the president. Can the District Attorney still file charges against President Bush? Beyond filing charges can the DA compel him to appear in court? If it somehow got far enough that the President had not been impeached but was convicted of the crime would the Oval Office move to the state penitentiary?
If it makes a difference would it matter if the crime occurred before the president was elected and took office?
Note that the SCOTUS ruled (unanimously no less) in Clinton v. Jones that an president is not immune from civil litigation while president. However, while I cannot see why a criminal case would be viewed differently by the court they make no mention of it I saw.
[sub]*- Note this is not meant to be a Bush bashing thread nor a republican versus democrat thread. The examples I use are merely because those are the people in those positions today.
I’ll take a shot here. I’m fairly certain that, under the Constitution, the only process for charging and trying a sitting U.S. President, for a criminal act, is by impeachment.
That is true if thge President commits a criminal act as the President, in the role of President.
I.E. – He uses his Presidential powers in an illegal way.
In that situation – impeachment.
However, if George Bush pulls out a gun and shoots someone in cold blood, he can face “civilian” criminal charges as well as face indictment by the grand jury, criminal trial, etc – as well as probable impeachment.
Now your example is very obvious – out and out murder.
But odds are in real life a criminal act by a President is blurry – don;t really now where the office of POTUS ends and the man begins.
Then VP Spiro Agnew was being investigated by the MD DA for kickbacks when he was govenor of MD. The evidence was sufficient that Agnew made a deal where he resigned. If the Veep (which is as contitutionally protected as the PotUS) can’t avoid being prosecuted by a state, there’d be no problem prosecuting the PotUS. (Else Spiro could have just told the DA “Come back in '77!”)
Therefore the impeachment process has no connection with the law, whether criminal or civil. Impeachment is an entirely political process, and the grounds can be whatever Congress deems appropriate. There is no obstacle to the indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing of a President any more than there’s an obstacle to suing him.
In the OP scenario, Bush would immediately be arrested for murder, and in all likelihood if he didn’t resign the Presidency he’d be rapidly impeached and removed, unless the Cabinet invoked the 25th Amendment and devolved his powers upon the VP first. But he’d still be President by title then.
Impeachment has nothing to do with criminal prosecution. The only possible effect of impeachment is being removed from office and/or being barred from holding an office in the future. Impeachment procedures do not carry any power to imprison, fine, or punish its subject in any other manner.