Were USA states really this disconnected in 1964, and was bigamy really punished by death? I've just watched the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode Three Wives Too Many from 1964. In it, a man has a wife in four different USA states, traveling between them constantly and keeping them secret from one another. Apparently, the punishment was extremely harsh -- death, even?! -- for &quot;bigamy&quot;, so he's very scared of this becoming revealed. Yet he is legally married to four different females. How is this possible? How can there not have been some sort of central authority keeping track of this, especially if it's not only illegal but an extremely serious crime? Were the different (even nearby) USA &quot;states&quot; so extremely detached as to not share this kind of basic information? Maybe it's only silly TV nonsense, but they make it seem like the different states are almost like different parallel worlds. I may also have misunderstood the part where one of the wives threatens him with revealing the whole setup, but she seems to suggest that he will be executed for bigamy.
I'm thirding the &quot;very plausible&quot; on the disconnect. Something to keep in mind is that the US is big. Really big. It's one of the top things people who aren't familiar with the US just don't grasp. The time to drive from Los Angeles, California to New York City, New York is only about 25 minutes less than the drive from Lisbon, Portugal to Moscow. The time it takes you to drive through multiple countries in Europe won't even get you out of some of our states. You could dedicate an entire day to your cross country trip just getting between El Paso, Texas and Houston, Texas. While there are a few small states, the end result is that most states are disconnected, in the sense that you mean, just by virtue of distance alone. The reasons mentioned in the other answers--fiercely independent states with all of these records administered locally, and lack of substantive computer database technology for several more decades--reinforces this. But physical disconnection is itself a powerful force here, and has long contributed to significant differences in culture and law between states. Not quite the cultural and legal disparity between, say, Spain and Russia, but enough to be noticeable. For example, Ted Bundy went on a seven state killing spree in the mid 1970's, racking up 20 confirmed and 30 confessed murders, assisted by his knowledge that states rarely ever communicated information about murders and missing persons to each other. When he was at last arrested for good in Florida, it took a lot of time for authorities to even know who they had on their hands and the severity of his crimes, due to this lack of sharing (and his using a false name; which they figured out was false fairly quickly, but that still didn't tell them his real name). These killings helped to spur states to create better information sharing agreements and cooperation with Federal authorities, but point being: even murder wasn't something states felt was worth keeping other states informed of as late as the 70's.
Twenty States Allow Pre-Conviction Pardons The default rule is that states follows the federal rule that a crime can be pardoned any time after it is committed, but cannot be pardoned before it is committed. It appears that this is the rule in 20 U.S. states (a compilation of state clemency laws and procedures can be found at this website and a compact chart for all 50 states is here). Admittedly, this evaluation relies on a third party summary that may not capture every fine nuance of the process or exception to the general rule. Four States Where Pre-Conviction Pardons Are Allowed Don't Actually Grant Them Under A Policy Which Is Actually Followed This list of 20 states include states where the Governor or Board or both working together, have the power to grant clemency in a very broad array of circumstances, but have adopted policies for how the current Governor or Board will handle applications that are more restrictive than the legal authority that the person issuing pardons has to grant them. In Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Nebraska, the pardon power is legally very broad but recent Governors, as a matter of personal pardon power policy, have refused to consider applications for pardons by people who have not completed their sentences many years earlier (5 years in IN; 7 years in MN; 10-15 years depending upon the offense in MA; 3-10 years depending upon the offense in NE). In addition to these four states, North Carolina's Governor has an informal five year from completion of sentence waiting period. But, North Carolina is not included because in practice, the Governors of North Carolina have granted almost all pardons awarded in cases where the Governor is commuting sentences due to a likelihood of actual innocence of a crime, notwithstanding this policy. Commutation Of Sentences And Pre-Conviction Pardons Are Very Rare In practice, however, commutation of a sentence for crimes, or pardons of people who have not completed sentences for their crimes of conviction are very rare in every state, although the frequency with which pardons are granted varies wildly from state to state. For example, in Alaska, the pardon power is legally very broad, but has been exercised only three times since 1995, while in Pennsylvania the hybrid Governor-Board pardon power is theoretically more narrow but about 150 pardons are granted per year (a rate about 1000 times greater before adjusting for population, and more than 30 times greater after adjusting for population). The vast majority of pardons are issued to people who have been convicted of a crime and served their sentences and shown good behavior after their release in order to relieve the applicants of the collateral consequences of having a criminal record, such as ineligibility for occupational licenses and loss of gun ownership rights. Pardons for people who have not been convicted of a crime and commutations of the sentences of people who have been convicted of crimes and are still serving their sentences are extremely rare in every state, and pardons for people who have not been convicted of a crime at the state level are less common than commutations of people who are currently serving sentences for crimes they have been convicted of by courts. There are probably fewer than twenty such pardons or commutations per year in the United States on average (excluding several cases in which a Governor has commuted the sentence of everyone sentenced to death to life in prison). The number of pardons of people who have not been convicted of a crime at the state level is probably less than five per year on average in the entire United States - although there are occasional spikes (e.g. in the case of pending prosecutions where serious doubt has been cast on a common source of evidence like a state informant or a crime lab). Most of the notable instances of pardons of people who have not been convicted of crimes (e.g. President Carter's pardon of Vietnam era draft dodgers) involve categorial pardons of a class of people rather than case by case evaluations of individuals, and resemble a legislative amnesty process to serve a political goal, rather than an individualized quasi-judicial consideration of a particular individual's case in the interests of justice tempered by mercy. Immunity From Prosecution On the other hand, even when a state limits the pardon power to persons who have been convicted of a crime in a court of law (which many appear to), there is something almost equivalent to the pardon power for people who have not been convicted of crimes that is routinely used by executive branch DAs (i.e. a grant of immunity from prosecution for a crime, for example, in exchange for testimony or cooperation with an investigation). This practice is quite common, although so far as I know, there are no comprehensive statistics available regarding immunity from prosecution grants, although there may be some estimates of how many are made in the academic literature. Governors v. Pardon Boards v. Hybrid Systems While it doesn't go to the thrust of your question, it is true, however, that while every state has a pardon power, not every state vests that power in the Governor of the state on the federal model. Many states (e.g. Georgia, Texas and Oklahoma) require the involvement of a Board of Pardons and Paroles (or an equivalent body) to be involved any time that a pardon is sought, sometimes independently of the Governor, and sometimes in coordination with the Governor. Wikipedia states that nine states have Boards of Pardon and Parole or the equivalent with exclusive power over pardons. In the other forty-one U.S. states the pardon power is vested either in both the Governor and a Board, or is vested entirely in a Governor. The pardon power of the President extends only to offenses recognizable under federal law. However, the governors of most of the 50 states have the power to grant pardons or reprieves for offenses under state criminal law. In other states, that power is committed to an appointed agency or board, or to a board and the governor in some hybrid arrangement (in some states the agency is merged with that of the parole board, as in the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board). Nine states in the United States have Boards of Pardons and Paroles that exclusively grant all state pardons. These states are: Alabama (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Connecticut (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Georgia (Board of Pardons and Paroles), Idaho (Commission of Pardons and Paroles), Minnesota (Board of Pardons), Nebraska (Board of Pardons), Nevada (Board of Pardon Commissioners), South Carolina (Board of Probation, Parole and Pardon), and Utah (Board of Pardons and Parole). In states that vest the pardon power in part or in full to a Board of Pardons and Paroles, as opposed making it a plenary power of the Governor personally which is not subject to review or limitation as in the federal model, as a practical matter, it is much harder to fit into the Board's bureaucratic process for processing pardon applications when there is not a conviction that has been entered, than it is in the less bureaucratic case when that power is vested solely and personally in the Governor on a plenary basis. The pardon board process in many states, at least as a practical matter, makes it impossible to obtain a pardon until there has been a conviction and in most cases, also a sentence imposed and sometimes a waiting period after a sentence has been fully served. For example, many states prohibit applications to the pardon board from being made until a sentence has been completed or until a certain number of years after a sentence has been completed (effectively limiting the power to restoration of civil rights rather than commutation of a sentence, or relief for someone who has not been convicted).
Yes The only accurate thing in the linked article is: &quot;I am not a Constitutional lawyer.&quot; That could be taken further into &quot;I have no real idea how our legal and political systems work.&quot; One of the tasks of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is to interpret the laws of Massachusetts including the Massachusetts Constitution. In Goodridge v. Department of Public Health the court decided that the Constitution provided for equal protection and due process and that if the state wished to discriminate against people on the basis of sex they needed a good reason. The reasons the state put forward were: providing a 'favorable setting for procreation'; ensuring the optimal setting for child rearing, which the department defines as 'a two-parent family with one parent of each sex'; and preserving scarce State and private financial resources. On 1. the court said marriage is irrelevant for procreation and vice-versa. On 2. they said Massachusetts law on child welfare dealt with the &quot;best interests of the child&quot; and that it is not in those interests for the state to deprive the child of benefits because it doesn't like the sexual orientation of the parents. On 3. they said equal protection means equal protection. In a common law legal system like Massachusetts where courts have the power to strike down legislation then that takes effect as soon as the decision is published. The law ceases to exist without the legislature or the executive doing anything. Now, the people of Massachusetts are free to amend their constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage or remove equal protection rights if they want. However, at the time and subsequently, the majority don't want.
You don't need to "report" it to anyone in the US or do anything else. The US doesn't have any national registry of marriage. Any marriage or divorce conducted anywhere in the world is automatically recognized anywhere in the US (with some exceptions like polygamous marriages); the same is true in many other countries. How does the U.S. find out, for tax or insurance purposes? Obviously there's a little box that says [] Married but how would they know if I lied if I'm not registered in the United States? They don't, and don't need to. (The same is true for marriages in the US -- they don't directly "know".) You are required to use an appropriate filing status for your marriage status at the end of the year for each year's tax returns. If you don't, you are committing fraud. There are lots of things that you can intentionally lie about on tax returns, and they may not immediately "find out"; but when they do, you are in big trouble. Am I legally required to report it when I return? No. Would the Canadian/provincial government inform the U.S./state government? No.
It is probably illegal in all of the jurisdictions in the US where a fetus is legally declared to be a person and where the murder statutes are written to not explicitly exclude abortion: that is, in no jurisdictions. No law existing or proposed for Georgia specifically addresses "travel for the purpose of getting an abortion". The underlying theory behind the claim (advocated by some Georgia attorneys) is that a person may be open to a conspiracy charge for taking a woman to another state to get an abortion, which would be a crime if committed in Georgia. If a conspiracy exists in Georgia to do something illegal (in Georgia), that is a violation of OCGA 16-4-8 ("when he together with one or more persons conspires to commit any crime and any one or more of such persons does any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy"). The substantially same law exists in Washington, and most if not all other states. The theory is apparently that "conspire to commit a crime" means something like "conspire to perform an act which would be a crime if performed in in this jurisdiction", e.g. "purchase marijuana, or take a job at certain payday loan companies". No state has successfully claimed extraterritorial jurisdiction, where a Georgia resident can be prosecuted in Georgia for a legal act carried out in another state, so this theory is a bit of a stretch.
A problem with the question is that it uses the loaded term "victim". If you change the question to "Are there actions that you can perform involving another person, which are crimes even if the other person consents to participating in the action", then there are very many. Selling alcohol to a minor; selling heroin to anyone; selling sex in most US jurisdictions; selling firearms to a convicted felon. Also, for a physician to assist a person in suicide, in most states. Formerly in the US, various forms of sexual intercourse were acts that consent did not make legal. Whether or not the person is a "victim" in these cases is open to debate. In the case of physician-assisted suicide in Washington, the doctor is allowed to prescribe (oral) drugs that the person ingests: only a doctor is permitted to do this, both under the DWD Act and as a consequence that only a doctor can prescribe the drugs. There seems to be a belief that it is a crime to assist a person in committing suicide, which is probably correct if the assistance is shooting the person in the head, or in general directly causing the death (thus, "I give you permission to shoot me in the head" doesn't cut it). But from what I can tell, it is not generally against the law in Washington to help a person who commits suicide (e.g. supplying the means of self-dispatching). In some countries, suicide and helping with suicide is illegal, e.g. in Kenya Penal Code 225 says Any person who (a) procures another to kill himself; or (b) counsels another to kill himself and thereby induces him to do so; or (c) aids another in killing himself, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for life. No exception is created if the person consents to being aided to kill himself.
In Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a similar provision in Maryland's constitution violated the First Amendment and could not be enforced. So presumably the North Carolina provision is similarly unconstitutional and unenforceable. It's not clear why it wasn't removed in 1971. I found references to a 2009 incident in which an avowed atheist named Cecil Bothwell was elected to the Asheville, NC city council. Opponents apparently threatened to mount a legal challenge to his eligibility under the Article VI provision. It's not clear if they actually tried to do so, but in any event, Bothwell served his full four-year term and was then re-elected for another.
Murder is one of the few cases where the intention and not just the act is relevant. The act – killing a person – is the same for Mord and Totschlag, whereas fahrlässige Tötung covers acts that have caused the death of a person. The language of the Stgb labels the perpetrator who killed someone as a murderer or manslaughterer depending on their intention. That a person and not an act is punished is often criticized, but it has no practical consequence. Clearly, the intention isn't that the second one is free. Courts are able to interpret the law reasonably. However, the distinction between two kinds of killings seems to have no basis in reality and robs courts from flexibility to find a just sentence. There are occasional attempts at reform, but none will be successful while CDU/CSU is part of the government.