Can you be arrested the day a law is enacted? On October 2, 1937 the Marijuana Tax Act was enacted. On this same day, a man named Samuel R. Caldwell was arrested by federal agents for selling Marijuana to Moses Baca, who was also arrested. Is this still allowed, whether federally or on the state level? Can you be arrested the day a law is enacted?
The Act was enacted on August 2, 1937. Pub. 238, 75th Congress, 50 Stat. 551 It had an effective date of October 1, 1937, specified at Sec. 17: This Act shall take effect on the first day of the second month after the month during which it is enacted. As soon as a law defining a crime is in effect, you can be arrested for that crime. Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. 386 (1798) sets out the limits on ex post facto laws, as prohibited by clause 3 of Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution (&quot;No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed&quot;). A law is prohibited if it &quot;makes an action done before the passing of the law and which was innocent when done, criminal and punishes such action.&quot; Thus, the limit is a strict limit against retroactivity, but a law can become effective immediately. Justice Story, in In re Richardson et al. 2 Story, 571 (1843) wrote: [...] it appears to me, that in all cases of public laws, the very time of the approval constitutes, and should constitute, the guide as to the time, when the law is to have its effect [...] The legislature have it in their power to prescribe the very moment, in futuro, after the approval, when a law shall have effect.
Legally you face no problem. The section 66A of the Indian IT Act, which used to be previously misused for penalizing anyone who dared insult a politician, has been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India. But the police could still detain you for 48 hours (legally) without giving any grounds; they are required to do that, but the police are seldom held accountable. The supporters of the said politician can vandalize your home and office without fear of legal action. I am not a lawyer. Whatever is posted above is my opinion and data that I believe to be true to the best of my knowledge and resources available to me. Please contact a lawyer for professional advice.
The short answer is &quot;yes&quot;. There is U.S. Supreme Court authority that supports this position, In particular, United States v. Laub, 385 U.S. 475 (1967), Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 599 (1965), and Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423 (1959), stand for the proposition that a defendant may not be punished for actions taken in good faith reliance upon authoritative assurances that he will not be punished for those actions. If the U.S. Department of Justice (or a U.S. Attorney with jurisdiction over the place the offense was committed) (hereinafter DOJ) says this, people who reasonably rely on that pronouncement can't be prosecuted until a different policy is announced and people who acted in reliance on the previous DOJ position are given a reasonable opportunity to change their conduct in response to the newly announced policy. The statement does have to be a publicly announced policy (or a policy personally communicated to the defendant or his counsel), and not just a de facto reality in terms of prosecutions not being brought in the past, or a secret, unannounced policy (or, for example, an unofficial and offhand statement of the U.S. Attorney General at a party that does not amount to a policy statement). Of course, the defense doesn't protect you if the DOJ says it won't prosecute if you do X, but you do X times Y which goes beyond the safe harbor created by the DOJ pronouncement. For example, the DOJ might say that they will not prosecute conduct involving marijuana offenses that is legal under state law, if it does not violate any other laws, and also meets certain conditions found in federal law (e.g. no offenses within 1000 feet of a school) that the DOJ chooses not to refrain from enforcing. But, if the DOJ then publicly says that it will start enforcing federal law without exceptions on July 1, 2021 and has rescinded its prior policy, a reasonable time in advance, then this defense ceases for conduct after that date. What constitutes reasonable notice would depend upon the facts and circumstances. The DOJ can also reach a binding agreement not to prosecute a particular instance of conduct by a particular person irrevocably in connection with plea bargaining type agreements, with respect to offenses of which the DOJ has jurisdiction (but not necessarily prosecutions by a different government such as a state government or the government of another country, for which the DOJ is not an authorized representative). For example, suppose that a mail carrier is killed by a resident of a home claiming to have acted in self-defense in Denver, Colorado. The DOJ could reach an irrevocable agreement with the resident to accept a plea bargain to a misdemeanor charge of not paying the tax due on the sale of the firearm from a non-compliant gun shop, dismissing forever the charge of murder of a federal post office employee. But that agreement would not bar the District Attorney in Denver from bringing murder charges twenty years later under state law prohibiting murder of human beings in the State of Colorado. For the defendant resident to prevent that from happening definitively, an agreement from the State of Colorado's District Attorney in Denver, or the Colorado Attorney General, would also be required.
The police would still be able to get a warrant even if there was no suspicion against the current owners, provided that there was reasonable evidence to suggest that the body was in the garden. In the event that the police enter the garden and see something like the marijuana plants, plain sight doctrine would allow the police to charge the owners with growing marijuana. If there was something like a green house, separate from the garden area that the body may be located in, the search warrant, if limited in scope, may not apply to the greenhouse. This depends on how specific the location of the body is believed to be: anywhere in the garden? or right behind the house against the wall? The odds are good the police would bring in a cadaver dog (included in the warrant) and patrol the garden to see if the dog finds anything.
Generally, no. Legislatures pass laws. The fact that someone else knows more about the thing they're passing laws about is utterly irrelevant -- the power to make laws is given to the legislature, not to experts. If the legislature thinks experts should make the rules on something, they can delegate (this is why the FDA approves medicine rather than Congress), but the legislature of a state generally has the power to pass any law that is not unconstitutional. Your analogy to paper money is a poor one: that's a federalism thing, not an expertise thing. Congress has established a system of paper money, and states can't interfere with that. It's not that the Fed thinks paper money is good, it's that Congress said paper money shall be a thing. That could stop a state from banning an FDA-approved drug; however, since marijuana is illegal under federal law, it would be odd to conclude that banning it at the state level as well is preempted. Legislators aren't inherently experts on anything (except being elected). That doesn't matter. They have the authority to pass laws, even if those laws directly go against the views of people who are recognized experts in the area. You appear to think there must be a judicial remedy against bad policy. You would be wrong. The role of the courts is not to decide what policies are good or bad; they are concerned only with what is legal. Deciding what policies are good or bad is a matter for the democratically elected representatives of the people, or for the people themselves in states with ballot questions. It is not the job of the courts.
Space Force appears to have been specifically included on Dec 27, 2021. &quot;Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.&quot; Public Law 117-81, Sec. 1045 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1385
In English law during the late Medieval and early modern period (from 1321 to 1798), it was possible for Parliament to pass a "Bill Of Attainder". This declared a person guilty of a crime, often treason, by legislative act, without any trial or other legal process. See the Wikipedia article for more detail. Often a Bill of Attainder not only decreed that a person (or people) was guilty, but also confiscated the convicted person's property, preventing his (or rarely her) heirs from inheriting, and possibly rendering those heirs ineligible to hold public offices or peerages. The heir would also be prevented from inheriting through the attainted person. For example, property held by the father of the attainted person would not pass to the child of the attainted person. This was called "corruption of the blood", and was viewed with particular horror by many during the colonial period and before. It effectivly treated the heirs of the attainted person as illegitimate. Attainder was usually followed by execution, possibly by torture. The bill might specify the specific fate of the person attained. The US constitutional provision prohibits declaring people guilty of crimes by legislative act, and prohibits sentences for crimes that take property or rights from the family or heirs of the convicted person, even in cases of treason. At least that is how it has been interpreted. Fines may be levied, but may only fall on the actual property of the person convicted. The US Supreme Court has dealt with this clause in several cases: Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 (1866) (law requiring lawyers to swear that they had not supported the confederacy held unconstitutional); Cummings v. Missouri, 71 U.S. 277 (1867) (Law requiring an oath that the person had not supported the confederacy for a professional license held unconstitutional); Hawker v. New York, 170 U.S. 189 (1898) (a state law barring convicted felons from practicing medicine upheld); Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114 (1889), (a state law newly requiring that practising physicians must have graduated from a licensed medical school upheld); United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946) (federal law which declared three specific persons "subversive" and barred them from federal employment overturned); American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950) (federal law which required elected labour leaders to take an oath that they were not and had never been members of the Communist Party USA, and that they did not advocate violent overthrow of the U.S. government upheld); United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965) (law which made it a crime for a former communist to serve on a union's board overturned); and Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977) (law seizing Nixon's presidential papers upheld).
It seems you found out what happened. The police are wrong all the time and usually absolutely nothing happens from it. The police are not required to tell you why you are being arrested. See supreme court case Devenpeck v. Alford. The court merely considers that to be good police practice. They do have to justify probable cause for the arrest to the court.