See United States v.Williams 308 F.3d 833, 839 (8th Cir. 2002) The victim, an independent taxicab driver was robbed. The victim took people and packages traveling in interstate commerce to the airport. That was enough to provide federal jurisdiction.
But there are limits… one prosecutor tried to argue that the US currency stolen during a robbery was printed in another state and thus the robbery had an interstate nexus. The courts considered that to be too far a reach.
In the case of the Boston bomber, the federal government can easily take jurisdiction by virtue of 18 U.S.C. § 844 which provides “An arson or unlawful handling of an explosive” falls under federal jurisdiction. There are other possibilities (terrorist attack or carjacking count) to bring it under federal jurisdiction.
Huh? There is no “supremacy of federal jurisdiction” in a criminal case. Enforcement of federal criminal law is separate and apart from enforcement of state criminal law. Congress can specify whether or not there will be a parallel federal prosecution for any given type of crime.
[
I don’t necessarily disagree with you from past SCOTUS precedent, but wouldn’t this view make every murder, or even every jaywalking citation subject to federal jurisdiction?
I jaywalked, someone swerved to miss me, crashing into an apartment complex, making the tenants of the apartment less (or more) likely to leave their home that day to engage in commerce, thereby affecting the interstate market for the goods they bought/didn’t buy, etc.
That seems to be the argument that us strict constructionists always raise. And I believe that Lopez and Morrison hold to the fact that the activity engaged in must be economic in nature by itself. Growing marijuana as in Raich is economic. “One step removed” from economic was struck down in Lopez and Morrison. Bombing a city street seems to be “one step removed.”
A friend was on a federal grand jury. When you have Fed GJ duty, you participate for two days each month, for a year or two. My friend said that all the cases they reviewed were guns or drugs.
The gun cases were established as federal because the gun had crossed a state line at least once between being manufactured and where it was found (used in some crime, usually). It seems pretty thin as a basis for “interstate trade” justification for gun crimes that otherwise had nothing to do with interstate trade, but it was well-established by precedent, and that’s how it works, in the US today.
The federal law prohibiting “partial birth abortions” is predicated on the interstate trade basis. No idea why that applies, and there isn’t any explanation of that in the law, just the bare statement. It’s the excuse used by anyone to get a federal law that doesn’t really have a real justification under the Constitution.
It annoys me that anyone would call an IED a “weapon of mass destruction”. That term applies to things like nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, which are considerably more destructive than an IED. If we allow an IED to be called that, then so is a hand grenade. The term “WMD” loses its usefulness, and ends up meaning “any weapon that can kill more than one person at a time.”
I don’t have any problem with this being a Federal case, but it’s silly to use the WMD clause. Let’s just trot out that old workhorse, interstate trade. It won’t be tarnished any futher by the additional abuse.
But by those standards very ordinary military weapons such as claymores or rocket-propelled grenades are also WMD’s. It makes the term pretty much meaningless.
My Fed Criminal Law prof wasn’t the greatest, and it’s been a few years, but looking through my notes, he could get a life sentence for a violation of the Travel Act (18 USC section 1952) alone, if they can show that he traveled in interstate commerce or used a facility in interstate commerce (the Internet?).
Quoting from Brecht, 507 US 619;
…We have also spoken of comity and federalism. “The States possess primary authority for defining and enforcing the criminal law”…
Congressional criminal law is limited in scope, generally there is a crossover already of a state criminal law.
Not really, military level ordinance is designed to do the maximum amount of damage for the smallest charge. It is by definition a weapon of mass destruction, in fact its pretty much required to be or the Pentagon tells the supplier to make a better one that kills more efficiently.
I think it’s the time element that is significant: 3 dead, over 240 injured, and 10 amputations - in under 15 seconds, with no warning, no way for people to escape.
