OK, may be a silly question, but I’m curious about it anyway.
If the President in a state, and breaks one of its laws, do state or local police have the right to do anything about it? Or more specifically, if they attempt to act, will the Secret Service interfere?
So, for example, a President is in a store, picks up an item and just starts walking out without paying for it, and a cop is present, could the cop do anything about it?
Do you mean theoretically? Under the law, even the President is not immune to state laws. Nor federal laws. There has been some dispute over exactly what kind of oversight Congress has over the President (which is related to the Unitary Executive concept). Generally, the Legislative branch has none over the Executive and vice versa.
First things first, I think a local cop would have a tough time trying to physically detain the President. The Secret Service might have something to say about that. In addition, from a purely legal standpoint, the arrest power is aimed at detaining those ahead of indictment or who might be of danger to the public at large or a flight risk; neither of those are present in the situation you posit.
There is an interesting question about the powers to indict a sitting President, though. Can a prosecutor bring criminal charges against the President?
The first thing to point out is that no one knows for sure. There is a healthy academic debate about this issue, which exploded when the IC Kenneth Starr considered bringing criminal charges against the President before the Congress moved on impeachment.
One side says that the sitting President cannot be indicted. Relying on the unique role of the President, invested with the complete executive power, this side maintains that to indict a sitting president would be cripple the functions of an entire branch of government. For federal judicial process, this side relies on the structural separation of powers as the constitutional justification; for state judicial process, this point of view relies on the constitutional foundation of federalism. Note that this point of view doesn’t provide a sitting President a “Get Out of Jail Free” card; after the political processes of impeachment and removal ousts the president, then there ceases to be any constitutional difficulties.
The other side relies on the bare text of the constitution, which does not expressly provide such a Presidential immunity. Seeing as other constitutional officers are subject to the criminal processes before being removed from office (I believe a federal judge once spent some time in prison while still holding onto to his commission, as the Congressional impeachment and removal procedures lagged behind the prosecutor’s zeal to push the case along), this side of the debate sees no textual support for exempting the President from indictment.
Personally, I think the former argument is more compelling, considering the practical effects of indicting a sitting president and the perverse incentives that would arise should it be allowed. I think the argument is stronger should the President break State law (where Chief Justice Marshall once said that the “part should not be allowed to the destroy the whole”) than should the President break a federal law.
-Piker
Vincent Bugliosi wrote a whole book about indicting Bush for murder due to Iraq. He said a state should do it after he left office.
http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/
The book was pretty much ignored.
Presidents are not immune from any laws. To give a specific example, Ulysses Grant was once issued a ticket for driving his carriage too fast while he was President.
Well, I dunno; the man’s got his very own intercontinental-range airplane. Not to mention the armed men who accompany him wherever he goes.
President Flees Country After Alleged Alexandria Bank Heist
White House Officials Claim Latin American Summit Meeting “Routine Diplomatic Business”
I wrote this a while back: Straight Dope Staff Report: Who has the power to arrest the President?
There was some talk about the Secret Service vs. local law enforcement in connection to one of the Bush daughters’ underage drinking, but I don’t remember exactly how that turned out.
It was at the Barton Springs Chuy’s in Austin, and she was arrested. By weird coincidence, my wife happened to be there when it happened. Her Secret Service agent just shrugged and said “well, we’ll get you bonded out!”
Yep. It’s the Secret Service’s job to protect them from lunatics trying to harm them, not to protect them from the due process of laws if they break them. Now, I’m not sure if the SS would handle the president being arrested versus the president’s teenage daughters who happened to be drinking underaged…
I’ve heard the debates about if a sitting president can be charged and/or arrested which partially prompted my question.
Well, hopefully, we’ll never have to find out.
As I recall, the cop initially tried to refrain from ticketing him once he realized that he had stopped the President, but Grant insisted. I’ve seen the anecdote in serious biographies, but don’t have a cite handy.
also: great post piker.