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  • USA criminal law, ambiguous which state the crime was in

    From Roy@21:1/5 to All on Sun Mar 28 15:56:13 2021
    This message came in with a mangled header. Looks like I will have to
    fix the code to ignore it.

    Roy

    ----------------------

    Subject: USA criminal law, ambiguous which state the crime was in
    From: Charles Reynolds <c.p.reynolds.iii@gmail.com>
    Injection-Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2021 18:51:35 +0000


    A hypothetical situation. One morning a dead man is found lying on
    the "four corners" marker, the place where Utah, Colorado, Arizona,
    and New Mexico meet. He has been shot, so it's clearly homicide.

    The body is lying on its stomach, with its navel roughly over the
    four corners point. It has not been posed or arranged, all
    indications are that the location is simply where he fell. The
    autopsy shows that some time elapsed between the shot and
    his death, enough that he might have walked several yards before
    collapsing. The position of the body, etc, make it impossible to
    determine which direction he was walking from. There are parts
    of him in all four states.

    Which state has jurisdiction, investigates, prosecutes, etc? Or is
    it considered a federal crime because of the "interstate" nature?
    Bear in mind that it cannot be established with any certainty where
    the killer and victim were when the murder happened; they might have
    both been in the same state, or they might have been in two different
    states.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roy@21:1/5 to All on Sun Mar 28 16:32:53 2021
    A good question but a bad spot for the example

    This posting concerns the location.

    Six governments have jurisdictional boundaries at the Four Corners
    Monument: the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, as well
    as the tribal governments of the Navajo Nation and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

    The Monument is administered by the Navajo Nation and thus a murder here
    would be a federal crime.

    One side note: The marker is actually off by about 1807 feet from the
    correct spot by coordinates. However, the courts have ruled that the
    boundary markers are the actual borders of the four states and not the coordinates

    One example is the border between Colorado and Utah, where in one area
    the border jogs west about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from where it was intended
    to be placed by the written description (i.e. the 32nd meridian west of Washington). 38°16′34″N 109°03′38″W). Because of the Supreme Court decision in New Mexico v. Colorado, 267 U.S. 30 (1925), the border set
    out by the markers remains the border between the two states




    A hypothetical situation. One morning a dead man is found lying on
    the "four corners" marker, the place where Utah, Colorado, Arizona,
    and New Mexico meet. He has been shot, so it's clearly homicide.

    The body is lying on its stomach, with its navel roughly over the
    four corners point. It has not been posed or arranged, all
    indications are that the location is simply where he fell. The
    autopsy shows that some time elapsed between the shot and
    his death, enough that he might have walked several yards before
    collapsing. The position of the body, etc, make it impossible to
    determine which direction he was walking from. There are parts
    of him in all four states.

    Which state has jurisdiction, investigates, prosecutes, etc? Or is
    it considered a federal crime because of the "interstate" nature?
    Bear in mind that it cannot be established with any certainty where
    the killer and victim were when the murder happened; they might have
    both been in the same state, or they might have been in two different
    states.


    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Charles Reynolds@21:1/5 to Roy on Mon Mar 29 16:54:51 2021
    On Sunday, March 28, 2021 at 7:32:55 PM UTC-4, Roy wrote:
    A good question but a bad spot for the example

    Interesting. I had heard somewhere that the monument isn't actually
    at the right location, but had long since forgotten that. I didn't know
    about the Navajos, though.

    Let's make it a more general question. A crime is committed near
    a state border, and the circumstances and evidence make it
    impossible to determine which state the crime was committed
    in. Which state handles the matter? Or do the feds handle it?

    BTW, sorry about the header problem. I submitted the post via
    Google Groups, and I was using a Google Chrome browser. My
    PC uses Windows 7, 64 bit, "ultimate" edition. I don't know if
    that information helps, but there it is.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Levine@21:1/5 to c.p.reynolds.iii@gmail.com on Mon Mar 29 21:11:34 2021
    It appears that Charles Reynolds <c.p.reynolds.iii@gmail.com> said:
    Let's make it a more general question. A crime is committed near
    a state border, and the circumstances and evidence make it
    impossible to determine which state the crime was committed
    in. Which state handles the matter? Or do the feds handle it?

    Either state can handle it, or both can investigate and prosecute separately.

    I gather that when there is a crime close to a state line, a few phone
    calls between the law enforcement agencies generally sorts out who will handle it.

    It generally wouldn't be a federal matter. The Commerce clause affects civil cases that involve two states but not criminal ones.



    --
    Regards,
    John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
    Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Roy@21:1/5 to Charles Reynolds on Mon Mar 29 22:04:53 2021
    On 3/29/2021 4:54 PM, Charles Reynolds wrote:
    ...

    BTW, sorry about the header problem. I submitted the post via Google
    Groups, and I was using a Google Chrome browser. My PC uses Windows
    7, 64 bit, "ultimate" edition. I don't know if that information
    helps, but there it is.


    A few times I have had to add some code to fix headers from Google
    Groups. Nothing that you did caused the problem.

    The Injection-Info header gets too long so Google Groups try to wrap the
    line. The result is that

    posting-account=FoFR2woAAACKP_USuKA_DQaDml_a9L4tt

    appears on a new line. My server software interprets it as part of the newsgroup name, an error occurs, the posting gets dropped. Typical
    error message below

    No valid newsgroups in "misc.legal.moderated posting- account=FoFR2woAAACKP_USuKA_DQaDml_a9L4t"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)