Is a religion that involves head hunting legal in the United States? Say that a Dayak that still practices head hunting (Ngayau) moves to the United States and becomes a citizen. Is this person protected by freedom of religion or are they sent to jail when they kill someone as you are not allowed to do that?
Reynolds v. United States 98 U.S. 145 held that "A party's religious belief cannot be accepted as a justification for his committing an overt act, made criminal by the law of the land". Employment v. Smith 494 US 872 applies this to criminal acts, holding that "The Free Exercise Clause permits the State to prohibit sacramental peyote use" and "the [Free Exercise] 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". Likewise Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah 508 US 520 "a law that burdens religious practice need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest if it is neutral and of general applicability" (the ordinances were not narrowly taylored, unlike murder statutes). Thus laws against murder do not become unconstitutional when one proclaims a religious basis for violating the law, since they are religiously neutral and are there for good reason.
The United States would be one such country. I'm sure it is not the only one. In the case of countries with constitutional courts there is basically no one to second guess their interpretations which is also true when the apex court in a country provides an opinion. Since no one can overrule many of these courts, they are allowed to do what they want.
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.
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.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there When we think of crime and punishment, we automatically think of a powerful central and secular government with (relatively) clear laws handing down judicial sanctions - usually of imprisonment or financial penalties but increasingly including home detention, community service, or restitution to the victim. This is all the product of post-enlightenment thinking and would be largely unrecognisable (and stupid) to our ancestors. We don't think as they did, and we struggle to get into their mindset. This cuts both ways - we are equally horrified by the Roman collective punishment of decimation as we are by the fact that a Germanic murderer merely needed to pay a weregild, the price of which was determined by the social rank of the victim - with a discount for Welshmen in Anglo-Saxon law. Categories of Punishment All punishments fall into one or more broad categories listed here in decreasing order of severity according to the Western tradition. Damnnation Because we are a largely secular society, we don't think of this as being a punishment for crime; but there was no distinction between sin and crime in the past. The beauty of this system is that no crime goes undetected or unpunished. Whether you get your punishment in Purgatory, in front of the Assessors of Maat, in Gehinnom, or Mictlān, everybody gets what they deserve. This was not just a matter between a person and god - religion was culture, culture was religion, and both were the law. For your crimes, the priesthood could make things worse in the afterlife; or for your piety, they could make things better. In the Christian tradition, we have excommunication, which cuts you off from social life (a form of ostracisation) but also put your soul in peril - if you died in this state, you went straight to hell, no passing Purgatory, no collecting $200. This could be a collective punishment, called an interdict, where the clergy would be prohibited from performing those rituals required to make one right with God, such as christenings, marriages, and the last rites. We also have Hell as the punishment for an unrepented mortal sin, most often suicide, but also unrepentant capital felons, where the Church would not perform a burial. In the same vein, post-mortem dismemberment, such as being hung, drawn and quartered, which, in a Christian tradition that looked to the literal resurrection of the body, meant that you could never be resurrected. Apparently, a God that created the Universe couldn't stick people back together. This belief faded in the wake of the Great War when the widespread use of artillery meant there were hundreds of thousands of Christian dead in bits so small that not only couldn't God stick them together again, they couldn't be identified. Execution A time-honoured staple for anything from murder, treason, and drug trafficking to worshipping in the wrong way or, in some parts of the world, being the wrong race in the presence of a police officer. Just about any way you can imagine of deliberately ending a person's life has, at some time and place, been a method of execution. Modern usage has tended towards the elimination of suffering, which gave us lethal injection, firing squad, the electric chair, long-drop hanging, the guillotine, and, in the more advanced parts of the world, the elimination of the death penalty altogether. Historical methods tended to include torture, prolongation, and humiliation as a deliberate part of the execution &quot;such as the breaking wheel, keelhauling, sawing, hanging, drawing, and quartering, burning at the stake, flaying, slow slicing, boiling alive, impalement, mazzatello, blowing from a gun, schwedentrunk, and scaphism. Other methods which appear only in legend include the blood eagle and brazen bull.&quot; And, of course, crucifixion. This can be direct punishment of the perpetrator or, for collective crimes, execution through drawing lots or decimation. Human sacrifice is generally not execution as it was usually not a punishment for a crime but a great honour for the sacrifice - even if the methods came from the same playbook. Mutilation This includes one-for-one maiming, the most famous being Exodus 21:23–27 &quot;If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.&quot; However, this was also a feature of Babylonian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic law. It also includes removing the hands of thieves, the genitals of adulterers, and the tongues of blasphemers. Blinding was also a common punishment, often politically driven, because, throughout many parts of the world, a blind person could not inherit. It also includes branding, scarification, tattooing, or mutilation of the ears or nose, but this is primarily intended as ostracisation to mark the criminal permanently (see ostracisation and humiliation below). Depending on the technique, mutilation may effectively be capital punishment. Also, some forms of corporal punishment, like flagellation and caning, may permanently scar their victim, although that is not their primary purpose. Ostricisation and Humiliation Humans are social creatures, and exclusion from or falling in standing in society is particularly devastating - particularly in a pre-modern society when ostracisation often meant death. Excommunication has already been mentioned. We also have being declared an outlaw - this wasn't, as it largely is now, a synonym for criminal - it was placing someone beyond the protection of the law, effectively making them fair game for anything anyone felt like doing to them. Exile or banishment was another punishment usually reserved for those of high standing, like nobles or royalty. Forcing people to be publicly exposed and subject to verbal and physical abuse, such as through the stocks or pillory, was common. Having convicted people bear a mark of shame or a visible mark of their crime (see mutilation above) was also common. Arguably, maintaining criminal records and sex offender registers is a form of humiliation, particularly if it is made public. Servitude From slavery, to penal servitude, to indentured service, to transportation, to modern prison workshops, if you can make someone pay for their own punishment, people will find a way to do it. However, imprisonment per see has only been considered a punishment since early modern times and came in with such strange notions as reform (hence reformatory school) and penitence (hence penitentiary). Before then, a prison was a place where you kept people while awaiting trial or punishment - or people who were just too damn dangerous to be let loose. Corporal Punishment Caning, whipping, hitting with sticks, hitting with nettles, breaking bones, holding people in painful positions, hitting with the hand, etc. These have all been (and some still are) judicial punishments as well as methods of maintaining discipline in children and military forces. Financial These are basically two types: fines paid to the government, or restitution paid to the victim or victim's family.
You have misread the DMLP page. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to record a conversation if you are a party and if the other party does not consent. The fact that federal law doesn't ban something doesn't mean that states can't ban it. There is generally a presumption that when both the feds and the states can legitimately regulate something, the feds weren't trying to preempt all state laws on the topic. While people often say "federal law takes precedence over state law," the normal rule is that both laws apply; the federal law only blocks the state law if the feds wanted to block said state laws. So far as I can tell, the federal law has never been held to preempt two-party consent laws; the point of the federal law was to restrict recording, not extend it. It's like how federal law doesn't prohibit taking hostages inside the US to coerce a private company into doing what you want (anti-terrorism laws might, I guess, but the federal hostage-taking law doesn't); while the federal law excludes most hostage-taking in the US, that doesn't mean that it's legal to take hostages. Congress sometimes wants to establish nationwide standards for something, but the presumption is that they didn't.
The First Amendment is never interpreted as a complete prohibition against laws that could affect a religion, nor is it interpreted to mean that you can say or write anything whatsoever that you want. You cannot sacrifice humans when in the name of a religion, and you cannot sacrifice (murder) humans for fun. One part of the First Amendment regarding religion is the Free Exercise clause which says that you cannot prohibit the exercise of a religion, and another, the Establishment Clause, prohibits favoring a religion, or favoring religion over atheism. The clauses about free speech also do not mean that you can commit fraud and you cannot threaten people's lives. What decides how far the government can go is &quot;strict scrutiny&quot;, a doctrine that limits the extent to which the government can infringe on fundamental rights – First Amendment rights are the canonical example of a fundamental right. The main hurdle that a law so scrutinized has to pass is that the law is necessary for a compelling government interest. Preventing massive deaths is generally seen as such an interest. Then, the law has to be narrowly tailored to affect &quot;just those cases&quot;, and it has to be the lest restrictive means of accomplishing that end. Although the prevention of massive deaths is a compelling government interest, a government might screw this up in their legal arguments, as they seem to have done in Capitol Hill Baptist Church v. Bowser, where mass political protests were allowed but smaller religious meetings were prohibited. The government essentially &quot;waived&quot; that compelling interest, replacing it with an interest in preventing church meetings, which is plainly a violation of the First Amendment – they substantially burdened religious practices.
Germany would not extradite to Saudi Arabia. India and Kuwait might, because they and a few other countries have extradition treaties with KSA. To put this squarely in the realm of illegal (it's not clear that accidentally encountering Shiite material online is a crime in KSA), assume that the person deliberately watched porn then fled to India. Generally speaking, this is a severe enough offense to allow extradition under the India-KSA treaty. However, India gets to review the request for exceptions. Under article 3, the central question is whether this is a political crime. There are enumerated acts that are not deemed to be political. Watching porn is not a listed exception. Accordingly, India could determine that this is a political crime, and refuse to extradite. If the crime is advocating atheism, however, then under Article 3 (1)(j), this is presumably not an excludable offense, because atheism is officially terrorism in KSA per Royal Decree 44 (I can't find an official copy). On the third hand, India may still reserve the right to apply their definition of terrorism. Even if there were an extradition treaty between Germany and KSA, German law Act on International Cooperation in Criminal Matters of 23 December 1982 §3(1) would currently preclude extradition because Extradition shall not be granted unless the offence is an unlawful act under German law or unless mutatis mutandis the offence would also constitute an offence under German law. There might be acts that are offenses in both countries, but not e.g. "watching porn" or "advocating atheism". The boundaries of blasphemy under German law are not clear to me. Section 166 of the Strafgesetzbuch imposes a maximum of 3 years in prison for blasphemy, so it could be an extraditable offense. Sect. 6 of the "Cooperation" law also sets forth exclusions for reasons of political and religious persecution. Also, KSA would have to assure Germany that the death penalty would not be imposed.