U.S. Code and the Supremacy Clause The 18 U.S. Code § 1111 punished first degree murder by death Whoever is guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life; Whoever is guilty of murder in the second degree, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. The US code is a federal law, isn't it? Now Article VI, Clause 2 of the US Constitution, the &quot;Supremacy Clause&quot;, says that [...] the Laws of the United States [...] shall be the supreme Law of the Land [...] and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. This should imply that every state of the land should punish murder by death, no? How there can be States without death penalty?
While the point made by user6726 is not wrong with respect to this particular statute, it doesn't address a more basic point about how the supremacy clause works. Federal criminal laws govern punishments for federal crimes in the federal criminal justice system. Federal prosecutors bringing federal criminal charges against criminal defendants in the federal criminal justice system can and do secure death penalty sentences against criminal defendants in states where there is no state death penalty. One recent case where that happened was the Boston Marathon bombing case where a defendant was sentenced to death in federal court for the crime for violation of a federal criminal statute, despite the fact that Massachusetts has no death penalty of its own. This is not a supremacy clause issue. No state law had to be changed or invalidated because of the existence of the federal law. States law governs how the state criminal justice system works, not the federal criminal justice system. When we say that a state has abolished the death penalty, we mean that it has abolished it in the state criminal justice system. This doesn't absolutely foreclose the possibility that the death penalty will be imposed in that state on federal charges, although it does make it far less likely that the death penalty will be imposed. Partially, this is because "blue collar" crime is handled by the states. Partially, this is because out of comity and a concern that juries in states without a death penalty are less likely to vote for a capital sentence, federal prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty in a state without capital punishment than in a state with capital punishment. For example, there are 2,902 people on death row as of 2016, in the U.S. Almost 98% of death penalty convictions that have not yet been carried out were obtained in state courts. Only, 62 involve civilian death penalties imposed in federal courts (mostly in states that have the death penalty) and another 6 involve death penalties imposed in military courts (mostly in states that allow the death penalty or abroad). All of the other cases arose in state courts.
Clearly, British laws against e.g. murder, theft, fraud, and most other crimes were received into state law because those matters are under the jurisdiction of the states. States (and also to some extent federal criminal statutes) received British common law definitions of various crimes and defenses, but not British penal statutes (which often didn't define those crimes in the late 18th century). The statutory law of Britain did not apply as U.S. law at either the state or federal level upon the U.S. Declaration of Independence, except in isolated cases where a state, or the federal government expressly adopted it by reference in their own statute. The existence of British law, both statutory and through case law, informs how the U.S. common law was understood (something that was predominantly a matter of state law) and how concept in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. federal statutes, and state constitutions and statutes were understood (especially when terms from British statutes are used in a similar matter in U.S. state and federal statutes and constitutions). But, British statutes did not have direct force and effect in the U.S. after independence. As much as anything else, this simply reflect how the nature of statutes v. common law was understood in the late 18th and early 19th century. Nobody expected that British statutes would be directly applicable, so they weren't. There may have been instances where common law rules actually had their roots in British statutes that were mostly forgotten in long layers of British common law case law, and many statutes expressly adopting British case law also expressly incorporate selected relevant British statutes of generally applicability. But, no British statutes were applicable &quot;automatically&quot; in the U.S. For example, before Congress enacted the Naturalization Act of 1790, would a person born outside the US to a US citizen father have been a US citizen by dint of the US &quot;inheriting&quot; the British Nationality Act 1772 mutatis mutandis? No. Basic ways of thinking about what nationality or citizenship even was or meant would have been received, but not by receiving the British Nationality Act 1772 as U.S. law. And before Congress enacted the Crimes Act of 1790, would an American who levied war against the US, gave aid and comfort to its enemies, or counterfeited US currency have been convicted and sentenced under the Treason Act 1351? Not really. From the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 until the adoption of the Articles of Confederation on June 11, 1777, as a practical matter, the revolutionary forced had very little actual control of the courts in an enforceable way, there was an insurgency against the British underway, and it was an ad hoc effort from day to day and month to month that was muddled through without a formal structure or guidance at a colony by colony level, or even more granularly within a colony. In the period from June 11, 1777 until the new U.S. Constitution was implemented in 1789-1790, under the Articles of Confederation, the situation was fluid and irregular. State governments made most statutory and common law, adopting their colonial era colonial statutes but not necessarily British statutes that their local legislature didn't adopt. Central government laws usually acted on the states, not directly on individuals, much like treaties today. There was little or no directly applicable central government legislation. Many topics, like citizenship, were simply ignored in this era. The U.S. Constitution adopted in 1789, and the initial acts of the First Congress to implement it, were a response to the realization that after the war and its immediate aftermath had settled down, that the newly formed country needed to regularize, institutionalize, and deal with a lot of governance issues and legal questions that nobody had had the time or resources or authority to deal with while a war had been going on. For much of this time period the Revolutionary War was in progress and it wasn't always obvious who even controlled the courts or had practice authority to enforce court judgments. The Revolutionary War was not concluded until 1783. It was an improvisation at first, and not necessarily a uniform one, since the Articles of Confederation conceived of the U.S. as many countries in an alliance with each other rather than an actual single nation that had to address legal issues uniformly. Prior to the establishment of the federal court system under the U.S. Constitution of 1789 that remains in force, the only institution of the central government was Congress and its committees, which functioned as a legislative body, a body selecting people with executive authority, and as a court of last resort from state court judgments. Everything was carried out at the state level except for courts-martial. Structurally, the Articles of Confederation were a fused system, akin to the U.K. Parliament which had its highest court of appeals and its prime ministership fused with the legislative authority of parliament, layered on top of 13 separate sovereign state governments.
In the specific example you have given, Florida law could not be applied. A state has jurisdiction over a crime under constitutional due process limits on the scope of a state's criminal jurisdiction if the crime is either committed within the state (regardless of where the harm occurs) or is directed at or impacts the state (the classic example is a gunshot fired from the Ohio side of the state line killing someone located in Indiana, which could be prosecuted in either state, or in both states as it doesn't violate double jeopardy to be prosecuted for the same offense by more than one sovereign). Sometimes these issues are framed not as "jurisdictional" per se, but as "conflict of law" questions limited by the constitution. The proof that a crime was committed in the territory where it is applicable is called proof of locus delecti and depends upon the nature of the crime alleged and the location of the act or acts constituting it. To determine where a crime is committed depends on what acts constitute the crime, something that leaves considerable room for flexible interpretation and a careful reading of the exact wording of the relevant criminal statute. The most important limitation on the territorial jurisdiction of a U.S. state is the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This applies directly in the case of federal criminal prosecutions in the federal courts, and applies in state courts because it is incorporated to apply in state court cases through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States under 20th century case law applying the "Selective Incorporation doctrine." The Sixth Amendment mandates that criminal trials be conducted “by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” If a suspect is not present in a state to be criminally prosecuted, then the options available to a state are (1) to toll the running of the statute of limitations while the suspect is outside the state to the extent permitted by the relevant state statute and the U.S. Constitution, (2) to bring a civil lawsuit against the suspect instead of a criminal prosecution, or (3) to seek extradition of the suspect, which must be granted under certain circumstances under the United State Constitution and reads as follows in the pertinent part: Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2: A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime. (Note that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to civil lawsuits. Civil lawsuit trials can be conducted in a state other than the state where the breach of contract or tort giving rise to the lawsuit took place for jurisdictional purposes and not infrequently is brought in another state, although constitutional choice of law rules limit the circumstances under which a particular state's laws can be applied to a particular set of circumstances in a lawsuit.) The Sixth Amendment, on its face, prohibits Florida from prosecuting a case in the example given in the question involving a crime that was committed solely in Washington State. Of course, the exact definition of the crime might determine where it was committed. In traditional "common law" "blue collar" crimes there is usually no ambiguity over where it is committed except in the most extraordinary circumstances, but in prosecutions of conspiracies and crimes involving economic activity (such as owning or mailing something), the question of where a crime is committed can grow much fuzzier. For example, one could imagine a differently defined crime prohibiting providing funds to finance a purchase of marijuana in excess of 20 grams being committed both in Washington State and Florida at the same time (e.g. perhaps a purchase of marijuana in Washington State was financed by a Florida bank by delivering cash to a courier in Florida who is bound for Washington State knowing that the cash would be used to finance a marijuana purchase). Similar ideas apply in international circumstances where the Sixth Amendment and Extradition Clause do not apply. But, in those cases, the more flexible and less well defined "law of nations" as interpreted by Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court and the President still does impose some territorial boundaries on prosecutions for actions which are not crimes in the country where they are committed under that country's domestic laws. But, those boundaries are not so hard and fast and the idea that a crime is committed in places where it has an impact allow for considerable flexibility in prosecuting crimes committed outside the United States. It has also been well settled since the earliest days of the United States that "The courts of no country execute the penal laws of another." The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66, 123 (U.S. Supreme Court 1825) and that this applies to states applying each other's penal laws as well. So, Florida cannot enforce a violation of the criminal laws of Washington State in its courts either. If you get in a bar fight in Seattle, you can't be prosecute for assault in a court in Orlando, even if both of the parties to the bar fight were Orlando residents and U.S. citizens. Some notable cases resolving the question of whether locus delecti is present in a particular case include the following: In Hyde v. United States, 225 U.S. 347 (1912) although none of the defendants had entered the District of Columbia as part of their conspiracy to defraud the United States, they were convicted because one co-conspirator had committed overt acts in Columbia (225 U.S., at 363). So conspiracy is a continuing offense committed in all the districts where a co-conspirator acts on the agreement. Similarly, In re Palliser, 136 U.S. 257 (1890) the sending of letters from New York to postmasters in Connecticut in an attempt to gain postage on credit, made Connecticut, where the mail he addressed and dispatched was received, an appropriate venue (136 U.S., at 266—268). A typical state statute on the subject from Colorado's Revised Statutes (2016) is as follows: § 18-1-201. State jurisdiction (1) A person is subject to prosecution in this state for an offense which he commits, by his own conduct or that of another for which he is legally accountable, if: (a) The conduct constitutes an offense and is committed either wholly or partly within the state; or (b) The conduct outside the state constitutes an attempt, as defined by this code, to commit an offense within the state; or (c) The conduct outside the state constitutes a conspiracy to commit an offense within the state, and an act in furtherance of the conspiracy occurs in the state; or (d) The conduct within the state constitutes an attempt, solicitation, or conspiracy to commit in another jurisdiction an offense prohibited under the laws of this state and such other jurisdiction. (2) An offense is committed partly within this state if conduct occurs in this state which is an element of an offense or if the result of conduct in this state is such an element. In homicide, the "result" is either the physical contact which causes death or the death itself; and if the body of a criminal homicide victim is found within the state, the death is presumed to have occurred within the state. (3) Whether an offender is in or outside of the state is immaterial to the commission of an offense based on an omission to perform a duty imposed by the law of this state. Case law under this statute sometimes describes the issue presented under this statute a question of "sovereign jurisdiction." See, e.g., People v. Cullen, 695 P.2d 750 (Colo. App. 1984).
No. The language in question dates from when &quot;felony&quot; denoted a much more serious class of crimes than it does today; traditionally, &quot;felony&quot; essentially meant &quot;capital crime.&quot; Since then, California courts have narrowed the clause's meaning through caselaw. Incidentally, the provision in question appears in multiple state penal codes (it was a traditional common-law rule), and they have all restricted its meaning. In 1961, a California appeals court considered this issue in People v. Jones (191 Call. App. 2d 478). The court ruled that It is true that Penal Code, section 197, subdivision 1, does provide that homicide is justifiable when resisting an attempt to commit a felony. But the section does no more than codify the common law and should be read in the light of it. Taken at face value, and without qualification, it represents an oversimplification of the law today. The authorities generally rely on Blackstone for the earliest expression of the rule. He rationalized it in terms of no killing being justified to prevent crime unless the offense was punishable by death. (4 Blackstone's Commentaries, pp. 180-182.) But in those days all felonies were capital offenses. Perhaps the leading American case on the point is Storey v. State, 71 Ala. 329, 336-341, where the early law is reviewed and rejected, and the application of the rule limited to the commission of felonies that involve a danger of great personal harm, or &quot;some atrocious crime attempted to be committed by force.&quot; This limitation is today generally recognized. This case involved a violent felony (wife-beating), but it was a felony because the legislature wanted to punish what would otherwise be misdemeanor assault more seriously in a domestic setting. As such, The punishment provided by a statute is not necessarily an adequate test as to whether life may be taken for in some situations it is too artificial and unrealistic. We must look further into the character of the crime, and the manner of its perpetration (see Storey v. State, supra). When these do not reasonably create a fear of great bodily harm, as they could not if defendant apprehended only a misdemeanor assault, there is no cause for the exaction of a human life.
Congress could start by repealing the The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Afterwards Congress could draft a new law that gives prisoners, sentenced to death, a right to appeal to the Supreme Court. Currently, the Supreme Court chooses which cases it reviews, this law would force the Supreme Court to review each death penalty case. Congress could also mandate that an automatic stay of execution would be issued upon appeal. Then Congress could mandate that such a stay continue until a petition for rehearing is denied. Then Congress could make another law saying that any argument not raised in a lower court is not waived when it is not raised in an appeal. Additionally, it could allow the defendant to appeal each issue one at a time and declare that a stay must be issued for each appeal. In brief, the above would indefinitely postpone any execution for the whole foreseeable future. Let's say the above is not enough. Congress could first off prevent any further appeals when the defendant prevails in any level. For example if the defendant wins an appeal at a state Supreme Court, congress could prevent appeal to the federal Supreme Court. Next, Congress could also delay collateral attacks on the conviction by turning writs of Habeas Corpus proceedings into second trial by adding some clause that if the respondent to the writ does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the petitioner committed the crime from the evidence heard during the proceeding, the writ shall be issued, which essentially means the defendant's original trial is invalidated. In brief, Congress could make it financially impossible to handle appeals of death sentences for states, while providing funds for the defendants sentenced to death. Congress could also add so many procedural safeguards that postpone hearings for a duration much longer than a person's expected lifetime.
If you want to sue them, you should start with the US Constitution (as a model), in particular the Free Exercise clause: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". The question is whether one could overturn homicide statutes on the grounds that an individual holds to traditional beliefs that a human sacrifice is required every few months. Or, is it an unconstitutional prohibition of the Mormon belief in polygamy to outlaw polygamy, see Reynolds v. US, 98 U.S. 145. The court held that the statute immediately under consideration is within the legislative power of Congress. It is constitutional and valid as prescribing a rule of action for all those residing in the Territories, and in places over which the United States have exclusive control. This being so, the only question which remains is whether those who make polygamy a part of their religion are excepted from the operation of the statute. If they are, then those who do not make polygamy a part of their religious belief may be found guilty and punished, while those who do, must be acquitted and go free. This would be introducing a new element into criminal law. Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship; would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Observe that a religious exception to the law would be unconstitutional, as establishing religion as a means of gaining extra rights. The reductio ad absurdum of the unfettered religious-belief excuse is: Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances. The "wall of separation" was modified more recently in the 60's and 70's. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, the issue was compulsory education imposed on Amish children, where higher education was held to be antithetical to the Amish doctrine of a simple life. The court rules that The State's interest in universal education is not totally free from a balancing process when it impinges on other fundamental rights, such as those specifically protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the traditional interest of parents with respect to the religious upbringing of their children and especially it was incumbent on the State to show with more particularity how its admittedly strong interest in compulsory education would be adversely affected by granting an exemption to the Amish There were additional holdings pertaining to the legitimacy of the purported belief (that is, is there really such a doctrine – clearly yes). You might have better luck purporting to be a Rastafarian or Hindu, so I will set aside that complication. The core question will be whether the government has a "compelling interest" in the restriction, also whether the restriction is narrowly tailored. In the case of Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, Sherbert's employer required her to work 6 days a week (a change in policy during her time of employment), which she refused to do (as a member of SDA) and was fired. Sherbert was denied unemployment benefits because the firing was for cause. The court ruled that Disqualification of appellant for unemployment compensation benefits, solely because of her refusal to accept employment in which she would have to work on Saturday contrary to her religious belief, imposes an unconstitutional burden on the free exercise of her religion. and There is no compelling state interest enforced in the eligibility provisions of the South Carolina statute which justifies the substantial infringement of appellant's right to religious freedom under the First Amendment. Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 brings us to the neighborhood that you are interested in living in. The relevant detail is that Smith (and Black) were fired for ingesting peyote in connection with a ceremony at a Native American church. The court ruled that The Free Exercise Clause permits the State to prohibit sacramental peyote use, and thus to deny unemployment benefits to persons discharged for such use To be more precise, Although a State would be "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" in violation of the Clause if it sought to ban the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts solely because of their religious motivation, the Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a law that incidentally forbids (or requires) the performance of an act that his religious belief requires (or forbids) if the law is not specifically directed to religious practice and is otherwise constitutional as applied to those who engage in the specified act for nonreligious reasons. We can contrast this with Lukumi v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520. The city of Hialeh passed an ordinance forbidding animal sacrifice, specifically to suppress the Santeria church. The Supreme Court said, no, you may not do that: Under the Free Exercise Clause, a law that burdens religious practice need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest if it is neutral and of general applicability. However, where such a law is not neutral or not of general application, it must undergo the most rigorous of scrutiny: It must be justified by a compelling governmental interest and must be narrowly tailored to advance that interest. Neutrality and general applicability are interrelated, and failure to satisfy one requirement is a likely indication that the other has not been satisfied ... The ordinances' texts and operation demonstrate that they are not neutral, but have as their object the suppression of Santeria's central element, animal sacrifice. At least so far, restrictions on drug use have not been overruled as conflicting the the Free Exercise clause, although if e.g. Washington state were to prohibit Mormons from purchasing marijuana (where others can), that would surely be struck down as unconstitutional. There are a number of other relevant developments, for example Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, in reaction to Employment v. Smith, and that law statutorily mandating that strict scrutiny be applied to the question of whether a law violates the 1st: but this was ruled unconstitutional as applied to the states in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507. Then in Gonzales v. O Centro, 546 U.S. 418 (Schedule 1 tea for religious purposes), the court ruled that The courts below did not err in determining that the Government failed to demonstrate, at the preliminary injunction stage, a compelling interest in barring the UDV’s sacramental use of hoasca which is to say, we have a case where the federal government was prohibited from enforcing a drug prohibition involving religion. A challenge of the type which you have in mind will surely also involve the question of the legitimacy of the purported religion, where UDV was founded in 1961 whereas one might suspect that your claimed religion is a pretext to smoke pot (hence the Rastafarian suggestion). The WWII era conscious objector cases held that the CO exception to military service is not limited to governmentally-approved religions, but as a general rule, the courts have not ruled that you can simply claim to have a religious belief which is being infringed on and thereby be excempt from the law. The basic issue would be whether either the US government of the state of Kentucky have a compelling interest in preventing the use of marijuana. The Kentucky Supreme Court does indeed recognize the concept of "strict scrutiny", so the case is not doomed from the start.
The double jeopardy clause would prevent you from being retried by the government that tried you for murder (probably a U.S. state). But, you could be tried for fraud and obstruction of justice at the state level, and you could be tried for murder if an appropriate federal offense were located, at the federal level. Often conspiracy to deprive someone of their civil rights is used as a federal offense when there is a state level acquittal, and it isn't impossible to imagine that happening in this case as the victim had a right to the protection of the laws, and the state had a right to enforce the criminal laws, which was deprived in a manner that could be called "under color of state law.'
This is an example of the so-called felony murder rule, in which the crime of murder is defined to include deaths related to a felony committed by the defendant. You'll note that the article actually uses the phrase "felony murder". See the Alamaba Criminal Code at 13A-6-2: (a) A person commits the crime of murder if he or she does any of the following: [...] (3) He or she commits or attempts to commit arson in the first degree, burglary in the first or second degree, escape in the first degree, kidnapping in the first degree, rape in the first degree, robbery in any degree, sodomy in the first degree, aggravated child abuse under Section 26-15-3.1, or any other felony clearly dangerous to human life and, in the course of and in furtherance of the crime that he or she is committing or attempting to commit, or in immediate flight therefrom, he or she, or another participant if there be any, causes the death of any person. It's interesting that "another participant" was apparently held to include the police officer.