US Supreme Court decision in Heath v. Alabama:
This decision is one of several that holds that the Fifth Amendment does not forbid the U.S. federal government and a state government, or the governments of more than one state, from prosecuting the same individual separately for the same illegal act.
After reading the above article, I understand the reasoning. The defendant violated the laws of two states, kidnapping his victim on one and murdering her in the other. I personally disagree with the court's decision, and believe that if you are tried for a crime, the outcome of the trial should be binding in all 50 states since they derive their authority to prosecute crimes from the constitution. The constitution eclipses the laws previously in place when individual states were once sovereign countries. However, Justice O'Connor (who wrote the majority opinion) said that the 10th amendment merely
extended the sovereign authority that states previously had prior to their inclusion as U.S. states. In my view, the constitution erased and supplanted the authority of each state once it entered the union as a state.
Nevertheless, it still makes me wonder... Even if the reasoning behind the
Heath vs. Alabama decision were to remain in place over the decades, what's to prevent one state from criminalizing alleged acts that occur
entirely in another state (i.e.
not involving the crossing of state lines)? Can California make a law that says that anyone who enters its borders is subject to prosecution for any acts that occurred in, say, New York, prior to crossing into California? If I rob a liquor store in New York, get tried/convicted/sentenced/incarcerated, then upon my release travel to California, could California get away with prosecuting and trying me all over again? Does jurisdiction apply retroactively? I hope this never happens.
