Suppose you are at a clearly marked state border, and you decide to engage in act that is a crime in one state and legal in the other. For example, in one state, possession of marijuana for recreational purposes is legal.
So you’re standing at the border, and light up a joint. If you walk with your body on one side of the line but the lit joint in a hand on the other side of the line, is that legal?
Or suppose you engage in an act covered by sodomy laws in one state, but not in the other state. Which part of the sexual partners has to be over the lines for it to be a crime? Is one toe over the line enough, or do the genitals which are committing the crime need to be over the border line?
I would guess that the question turns on where you are, not where the instrument of your crime is, and since you are effectively in both states so long as you have even a toe in them, both states would have jurisdiction, and the one that wants to prosecute you could do so. You’re assuming the law works like a computer program, and the logical inconsistency of having both states having simultaneous jurisdiction over you makes the big Law Computer at police central freeze up. Nope. The law is perfectly willing to entertain logical absurdity in order to accomplish desired effects (in this case that no state be unable to punish acts within its borders). For fun, consider the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act, which specifies that when two people without wills die within a few days of each other, each is legally assumed to have died before the other. That actually works out, logically bizarre as it is.
Jurisdictions overlap in weird ways all the time. Worst case scenario, you might spend a few extra hours cooling your heels in a lockup while the cops haggle over who gets to (or who has to) deal with you. If your action is only illegal in one of those jurisdictions, that actually simplifies things quite a bit for the cops who want to book you.
Interesting and reasonable point. The OP’s question is very interesting, however, and I would be interested in knowing to what extent this has actually been litigated, i.e. where judges have actually ruled on these kinds of cases. E.g. defendant was in possession of a concealed handgun on the VA/NC border, he had a valid VA concealed carry permit but not a NC one, NC cops claimed that having any part of the body over the border conferred full jurisdiction in the state of all that person’s parts and everything carried on that person, defendant claimed that only VA (and the feds) had jurisdiction over the gun because the gun was concealed in his right pant leg which was firmly planted in Old Virginny, judge ruled that the case came under State v. McWiseGuy (1820) which firmly established the “any part of the body” principle in NC law.
Are there standard best practices for how far away a person ought to be from a border before engaging in activities that are legal only on one side? E.g. the legality of fireworks varies greatly between jurisdictions. Is there a standard number of feet or meters that fireworks vendors and/or performers generally need to place between themselves and the border in order to fully avoid any meaningful risk of cross-border arrest? Does it vary between borders? E.g. stay at least 100m away from the NJ border but you can get up within 20m of the PA border as long as you are carrying a reliable GPS.
Other weird but potentially interesting scenarios:
If you have very long hair (e.g. waist length), and your hair gets blown so part of it is over the border, but all your bodily organs are on one side, does that confer jurisdiction?
If you are holding an inanimate object (e.g. a carbon rod), and swing it so that the tip goes over the border, but the entirety of your body stays on one side, does that confer full jurisdiction over the entirety of your body, or does it only confer jurisdiction on the inanimate object (or its tip) and any acts committed using it?
Maybe I shouldn’t touch Utah even with a ten foot pole.
Years ago I was hit from behind right on the border between two cities. We turned and parked on the road that was the line. Since both I and the woman who hit me were injured, I called 911. No one wanted to respond. A police car from one of the towns drove by, circled around to not come close to us, and kept going. I ended up calling 911 again and screaming bloody murder at the dispatcher about injuries and lawsuits and all that before they agreed to send someone out.
As long as he was there, he cited her for hitting me (at 45mph when I was stopped to turn left) and not wearing her seat belt (she got bloodied bouncing off her windshield). Could have been worse, there was a loaded cement truck coming the other way and I could have been driven into it.
Just an example of where no one wanted to touch an issue right on their border until they were kind of forced to. If you’re standing on the border of two states smoking a joint, only the most ardent cop is going to arrest you. Most are probably going to decide that you must be standing in the other state and they have bigger fish to fry.
Homosexual acts are of course not a crime in America anymore, but I’m actually curious how this does play out at international borders between countries where it is a crime and where it isn’t. For example at the Thailand-Malaysia border, or the Venezuela-Guyana border or between Benin and Nigeria.
Or you could change it to a 25 year old male parking his car on a state border and making out with his 16 year old girlfriend. Could be legal in the front seat and illegal in the backseat.
This is a semi-big problem in my town as well. Ours is aggravated by the fact that the county line runs right through the middle of the town. That means that all of the schools have to be in one county, no matter how far away the children live. County Line Road is a major boulevard, and accidents along it result in ugly paperwork.
Or make it a customer having his way with a legal Nevada prostitute while too close to the state line.
Or consider a European example (apt because of the open border situation in many cases). Brothels appear to be legal in Germany and the Netherlands, but not in all other EU countries. On the other hand, certain Neo-Nazi activity is criminal in Germany. How close to the border is “too close” to Heil Hitler?
The OP’s question is very interesting (and I’m interested if anyone knows of any laws or cases that cover this) because the traditional cross-border crime question involves something that is clearly illegal on both sides and the question is who gets to prosecute. E.g. the old “Stand in jurisdiction X, shoot a gun across the border into jurisdiction Y, person in jurisdiction Y gets hit and dies.” scenario. It’s clear that you’d be guilty of murder, the real question is who gets dibs on your butt. The OP’s question is about potentially avoiding prosecution at all.
I get the idea that criminal jurisdiction is not solely territorial in nature and that jurisdictions often can punish acts that take place partly (or sometimes even entirely) outside the jurisdiction if they affect health, safety, etc. within the jurisdiction, but they still generally need some coherent locus to claim jurisdiction.
Or consider a non-criminal law example. If I telecommute to work while sitting on the border, do I split my pay 50/50 for purposes of state income tax (half earned in one state, half in the other), or do I have to pay tax on the entire thing twice? If I stick my hand across the US/Canadian border, do I have to check in with customs/immigration? Yeah, I doubt that they’d prosecute or even try to deport in “stupid tourist” situations, but suppose the over-border-hander was a notorious wanted criminal in the other country. Enough presence to seize them and send them for immigration processing?
One story I heard involved a soldier (or airman, or sailor, I dunno the details) who was on his way to base when a cop car followed him around the corner and put on the flashing lights before the guy got to the gate (most military bases stateside have a short length of road leading up to the gate before you enter).
As it happens, the guy’s tail light was out, and the cop was writing him a ticket for it. One of the gate guards walks over and asks the cop what’s going on, before informing him that his jurisdiction ended back at the corner. The base’s boundaries extend all the way to the intersection. The gate was just as far back as it was so they wouldn’t have traffic backed up on the main road.
The cops called dispatch, verified what the guard said, and rolled off. And then the guy got ticketed by the gate guard for having a tail light out. Difference being, traffic tickets on a military base don’t carry monetary fines (that I know of), but traffic tickets off base probably don’t get reported to your commander. Depends on which you feel like not wanting to deal with I guess.
Back in college I used to attend violator’s traffic school. Often. To the point I was on a first name basis with the cop who taught the local course. LA was & is a patchwork of small adjoining suburbs, most with their own police force.
His standard line, when asked about accidents at jurisdiction borders was:
"We walk out in the middle of the intersection & look for the small pile of fresh greasy dirt. It got knocked off the underside of the cars’ engines when they hit. So that’s where the accident occurred. And if we don’t feel like dealing with these two bozos, we kick the pile over the line to the other cop’s territory & leave before he gets there.
Do vehicles with state license plates have legal extraterritoriality? I believe that oceangoing ships do - e.g. a US flagged ship in Canadian waters may still be subject to US jurisdiction for acts committed on it. Does this apply to cars? E.g. ignoring the Feds for a moment, if someone drives a Utah-registered car to Colorado, buys some Colorado-legal weed there, does Utah have jurisdiction to indict or request extradition? Yeah, I know it’s not likely to actually happen due to practicalities, but is that jurisdiction there in theory?