Sherry Jackson's Appeal (Continued)

[The Observer]

See, there you go again - expecting Occam's Law to be respected by TPs everywhere.

[LPC]

I haven't read Bowen, but I believe the District of Wyoming includes the portions of Yellowstone National Park located in Montana and Idaho. 28 USC 131?

One law professor has suggested that, because of the provisions of Article III and the 6th Amendment, federal crimes committed in the Idaho part of Yellowstone could never be tried in any court.

See Kalt, Brian C., "The Perfect Crime," MSU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 02-14 and this report from the BBC.

[LPC]

The "issue" as I understand it is whether Article III, section 2, of the Constitution, which states that criminal trials must be held "in the State" in which the crime was committed must be held in a federal district court for that state, or must be held in a state court.

Trying to find a Supreme Court decision holding that federal courts have jurisdiction to try federal crimes is like trying to find a world-class astronomer to explain that the world is not flat, but I have come up with a couple of cases that might be helpful.

I had earlier stated that the purpose of the language in Article III was to prevent criminal defendants in criminal trials from facing the burden of defending themselves at great distances, and I have found a Supreme Court opinion that supports that view:

Aware of the unfairness and hardship to which trial in an environment alien to the accused exposes him, the Framers wrote into the Constitution that ‘The Trial of all Crimes . . . shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed. . . .’ Article III, § 2, cl. 3. As though to underscore the importance of this safeguard, it was reinforced by the provision of the Bill of Rights requiring trial ‘by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.’ Sixth Amendment.

United States v. Johnson, 323 U.S. 273, 275 (1944) (defendant mailing dental casts from Chicago in violation of the Federal Denture Act may not be tried in Delaware in the absence of specific Congressional venue statute).

Slightly more helpful in addressing the claim that a defendant in a federal case should be tried in state court is this opinion from 1890:

The petitioner relies on those provisions of the Constitution of the United States which declare that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall have the right to be tried by an impartial jury of the state and district where the crime shall have been committed. Article III, Section 2; Amendments, Art. 6.

But the right thereby secured is not a right to be tried in the district where the accused resides, nor even in the district in which he is personally at the time of committing the crime, but in the district ‘wherein the crime shall have been committed.’

[...]

In the case before us, the offense charged being an offer of money, or a tender of a contract for the payment of money, contained in a letter mailed in New York and addressed to a postmaster in Connecticut to induce him to violate his official duty, it might admit of doubt whether any offense against the laws of the United States was committed until the offer or tender was known to the postmaster and might have influenced his mind. But there can be no doubt at all that if any offense was committed in New York, the offense continued to be committed when the letter reached the postmaster in Connecticut, and that if no offense was committed in New York, an offense was committed in Connecticut, and that, in either aspect, the District Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut had jurisdiction of the charge against the petitioner.

In re Palliser, 136 U.S. 257, 265-268 (1890) (emphasis added).

Faced with a constitutional challenge based on Article III, section 2, clause 3, the Supreme Court clearly stated that a crime that was committed in New York and in Connecticut could be tried constitutionally in the District Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut.

Great reliance has been placed by some people (you know who you are) on Bowen v. Johnston, 306 U.S. 19 (1939), but I want to be the first to point out that the Bowen decision never mentions Article III of the Constitution. The only part of the Constitution mentioned by the court is Article I, section 8, clause 17, which grants to Congress (not the courts) "exclusive legislative Power" over lands ceded by the states for federal purposes. And most of the Supreme Court's opinion is about whether Georgia had ceded the land on which the crime occurred for the "exclusive use" of the United States. The opinion was therefore not about whether federal courts had the power to try federal cases, but about whether Congress had the power to punish crimes committed in the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park.

And I still have yet to hear a coherent explanation of why "in the State" should be understood to mean "by the State" or "in the courts of the State" in Article III, section 2, clause 3.

[notorial dissent]

Alright, corollary question based on that supposition. If you live and work in Yellowstone proper, and some people actually do, then where would you vote, who would you get your driver’s license from, etc. I know the rule is that even though you work in a Federal enclave, that you owe and pay your state taxes to the state the enclave is in.