ISTM that most crimes are covered by state law and federal law, and that the two jurisdictions simply overlap and double-cover the same issues. So for instance, murder is illegal by state law and federal law.
So why aren’t defendants automatically charged simultaneously under state law and federal law, since they have usually broken both? Is it that it’s too much trouble?
Also:
If a defendant is acquitted under state law, do prosecutors then simply move on to federal law and re-charge again?
Who makes the decision - “Let’s charge this guy in state court instead of federal court?”
Federal law usually only comes into play when an incident spans multiple states or involves federal property or agencies, or for some other reasons I can’t think of right now.
Prosecutors typically don’t move between courts. They work for a single government authority (e.g. county, state, federal). Sometimes, they may share information about a case with other agencies, but there’s no “we failed at state, let’s have a go in federal court”.
Most murders are not covered by federal law. Do you have any statistics about how many state charges would also be covered by federal charges?
It’s a different set of prosecutors, so they can’t just move on. It’s an entirely different process.
It’s usually a negotiation between state and federal prosecutors, or often multiple state prosecutors. Who has the strongest case, who gets to go for the harshest sentence, or where the most serious crime was committed all factor into it.
Take, for example, the unlawfully resident alien who was acquitted of murder in the shooting case in San Francisco. There is no “murder” statute under federal law that he could have been prosecuted using. So if the federal government wishes to incarcerate him, it has to be for some different crime. in his case, they intend to charge him with unlawful possession of a firearm, among other things.
Similarly, in the past, you will sometimes see someone acquitted of a state charge of murder charged in federal court with some violation of the various civil rights laws. While the underlying action that gives rise to potential convictions in each case may be essentially the same, the crimes are different in nature.
There are a number of federal and state prosecutors on the SDMB. Hopefully, one of them will be along shortly to answer some of your questions about the ins and outs of who charges what when.
This is pretty much wrong. Some murders are illegal under federal law, to be sure, but only because they have some nexus to federal interests. The murder of a federal agent in the performance of his duties, or of a witness to prevent his testimony in a federal matter – these are federal crimes. But George shooting Jay because George mistakenly thinks Jay ran over George’s wife Myrtle? Not a federal crime. (And Daisy deliberately running over Myrtle because her husband Tom was having an affair with her? Also not a federal crime).
If the act in question is a crime under federal law, that might be an option – but remember that while your question seems to assume the prosecutors are the same folks, they’re not. Your state prosecutor, who may be called the District Attorney, State’s Attorney, or something similar (in my jurisdiction, they are called the Commonwealth Attorney), has no power whatsoever to bring federal charges. That’s the job of the US Attorney for the federal district in which the crime occurred.
Usually it’s an amiable decision reached between the US Attorney and the local prosecutors. There’s a general notion that the jurisdiction that can impose the more serious penal consequences (and is willing to do so) gets first crack.
Sometimes it can get technical. We could imagine a search, for example, that is found to have violated the state constitution, but would be permissible under the Fourth Amendment – this happens when state courts create jurisprudence that assigns to their state constitutions a higher degree of protection that the feds do. In that circumstance, even if the state charges were more serious, the state prosecution is eviscerated by the adverse evidentiary ruling, so the feds might get their turn first by default. (There are some subtle problems with this example, but as an example, take it. )
State law may place additional constraints on the issue. In my jurisdiction, a state prosecution must come first, because if the same act is a violation of both a state and a federal statute, a prosecution under the federal statute is a bar to a subsequent prosecution under the state statute. But since there is no federal analogous law, the feds can prosecute after a state prosecution.
A good example of how little the Feds care about most murder was that in 1963 the assassination of the President wasn’t a Federal crime!*
That’s why the Dallas Police had control over the assassination investigation, keeping Oswald in their custody and so on. The Feds had no jurisdiction over the matter.
Things would have gone very differently if the Feds had taken Oswald into custody shortly after his arrest.
This jurisdictional wrangling was on display after the DC-area snipers were captured, because they had committed crimes in so many jurisdictions. There, the federal prosecutors had the upper hand in deciding who went first; they were the ones who had the snipers physically in their custody, so they could decide to whom to hand them off.
Also, if a suspect is in state custody, the Supremacy Clause generally enables the feds to demand that he be turned over to them so they can prosecute first, as long as they have a basis for doing so. There may be prudent reasons for them to refrain, however, as Bricker notes.
