It's a Federal Rap, No, it's a State Rap

December 16, 2007 4:01 PM

Book Research Filter: How is jurisdiction determined when someone is arrested on Federal and State charges at the same time?

For example, if federal and state police raid a local drug dealer together and the suspect is arrested on federal drug charges but a local officer is assaulted in the process. Which case has priority?, Is it the one arraigned first, or does federal always have priority in terms of trials, which sentence is served first, custody etc. Also sometimes in white collar crime cases when someone is charged with federal violations they are also charged with breaking state laws at the same time. Which charge trumps the other?

posted by Xurando to law & government (10 comments total)

the state and the feds have concurrent jurisdiction. they'll get together and talk it over, work out the best strategy for prosecution. if they can't agree, the constitution says that when state and federal law conflict, federal law is supreme.
posted by bruce at 4:19 PM on December 16, 2007

What are those conversations like? Are they ever adversarial?
posted by Xurando at 4:31 PM on December 16, 2007

the Feds don't go after someone unless they're prepared to spend beucoup bucks prosecuting the guy... way more than local law enforcement can.

thus for practical reasons, the locals are going to defer to the Feds.
posted by Mr_Crazyhorse at 4:58 PM on December 16, 2007

Actually, it's not uncommon in such a case for a perp to be prosecuted twice. By long precedent, that's not considered a violation of the "double jeopardy" clause of the Fifth Amendment.

That can also happen between states. John Allen Muhammad (the "DC Sniper") committed murders in DC (federal jurisdiction), Virginia, and Maryland. Virginia gave him the death penalty, and Maryland gave him "life without parole". Several other states could charge him, but since he's on Virginia's death row they probably won't.

If, for some weird reason, his Virginia sentence were commuted and he eventually was paroled, which seems unlikely, he wouldn't go free. In that case he'd be transfered to Maryland to serve his life-without-parole sentence.

Note that in your example there's no double jeopardy regardless. The perp could potentially be prosecuted under federal drug laws, and under state laws about assaulting a police officer. It's entirely possible he'd be tried for both, and then the real argument would be about whose prison got him (assuming conviction).
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:04 PM on December 16, 2007

One twist to this occurs when someone is arrested on federal property and charged with a state crime. There's a federal statute, the name of which escapes me now, that basically authorizes state charges to be applied in a federal jurisdiction, when there is no equivalent crime in the federal system. This happens most often with low-level petty offenses (disturbing the peace, etc). These can then be tried in federal magistrate court, applying state law.
posted by Brian James at 5:13 PM on December 16, 2007

Your answer is accurate, SCDB, but that's not a great example, because the murders Muhammad committed in Virginia were prosecuted in Virginia, whereas the murders he committed in Maryland were prosecuted in Maryland.

A better example "ripped from today's headlines" is the prospective Virginia prosecution of Mike Vick.

Law Blog Criminal Law Q&A of the Day: Is it unusual for a local prosecutor to bring criminal charges against someone who has already pleaded guilty to related federal crimes?

Answer, courtesy of Columbia Law Professor Dan Richman: It is indeed, but not unheard of. Usually where the locals and the feds each have an interest in a matter, the two will work out (sometime with loud voices) who will bring the prosecution. And where they don’t, a defendant willing to plead guilty can often work out a global agreement. Rare are the cases in which a turf war escalates into separate prosecutions, but they do happen. And because of the “dual sovereignty” doctrine, a defendant caught in such a situation has no constitutional recourse, since each jurisdiction is free to vindicate its “sovereign” interests as it sees fit.

From an article on the dual sovereignty doctrine (more details available at the link):

The United States Supreme Court has held that two separate states may convict a person for the same offense without violating double jeopardy. The United States Supreme Court has held that the federal government and a state government may convict a person for the same offense without violating double jeopardy.

posted by ibmcginty at 5:49 PM on December 16, 2007

I was going to say the same thing as ibmcginty about SCDB's example - it wasn't a good example of how double jeopardy protections do not apply to different "sovereigns" (i.e. the state and federal governments).

In the sniper case, a better example would be if Malvo has killed a federal law enforcement officer (which violates federal law) in Virginia. Virginia could try him for murder. The federal government could also try him for the same murder.
posted by thewittyname at 7:36 PM on December 16, 2007

Except sometimes, a local case has strong political issues behind it (violent crimes against a child, for example). The local prosecutor's going to smell red meat and want to prosecute locally, rather than letting the feds take the person on, say, a tax evasion charge. Your example of assaulting a cop is actually a good one -- they don't like to let that go, even if the feds want to get involved.
posted by katemonster at 9:22 PM on December 16, 2007

As people above have mentioned, the state and feds usually get together and talk about who will prosecute someone. Factors in the decision would be how easy or hard the case is to prove under the relevant state/federal law, which law carries the higher punishment, etc.

In the courtrooms I'm in, it is common for the local DA to dismiss the state charges against a defendant if the feds are filing a case based on the same events.

Where it gets tricky is the "which sentence is served first" part of your question. Let's say sentence A is 5 years and sentence B is 3 years. Often, defendants serving multiple sentences will get "concurrent time", meaning time spent in jail counts for both sentence A and B, and our defendant would get out in 5 years (or less, depending). Getting "consecutive time" means having to serve all of sentence A, then all of sentence B, for a total of 8 years. In general, the judge who sentences last in time controls whether the sentences are consecutive or concurrent, but this is not a guarantee.
posted by falconred at 10:17 PM on December 16, 2007

Actually, it's not uncommon in such a case for a perp to be prosecuted twice. By long precedent, that's not considered a violation of the "double jeopardy" clause of the Fifth Amendment.

.... assuming various very tricky factors.

If it is straight up the same crime, then it can be double jeopardy.

The Vick case is a better analogy and you can see why it works: the charges against Vick in the federal case were along the lines racketeering. That is, he was punished for gambling on something illegal, not necessarily the illegal act itself (the dog fighting). The state charges will probably be for violations of the state law against dog fighting, which is a different crime.

Going back to the original question: yes, there are concurrent jurisdictions and its not answered by simply who files first.

On a drug case, the issue would probably be whether drug dealer was working only in one city or was transporting. If the dealer was transporting across state lines, the feds would probably want to take a crack at him if the amounts were substantial.

If you are writing a book and want to resolve this issue, just keep the person in one state and let the state police handle it. I doubt many readers will be asking themselves "why don't the feds get involved." If you want to have the person transporting, just have the feds catch him and prosecute him. Again, I don't think anyone is going to ask the question as to why the state isn't handling it. In short, if you don't introduce the issue, then I don't think anyone would question it.
posted by dios at 10:57 AM on December 17, 2007