Jeff: How does law enforce decide if the punishment will be state or federal law?
The best example I have is marijuana use. In florida state law is harsher than federal law, so which one do they choose. Obviously federal law always trumps state law but in my home state of massachusetts federal law is never enforced for possession, do they generally just yield to the lesser punishment?
Are there other state laws that differ from federal law?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Ben
Jurisdiction is generally the determining factor. When both have jurisdiction, a discretionary agreement between prosecutors.
Kind of depends on the circumstances. Simple possession is usually a State issue. If you are transporting the drug from another State or country, then it becomes a Federal issue. One poor schmuck, here in Wyoming, got tagged by the State for possession with the intent to sell. Then the Feds came in and charged him with smuggling the drugs in from Mexico. As soon as he is done with the 8 years he is doing for the State, the Feds will toss him a federal prison for another 10 years. Sucks to be him. . .Answer by Paul S
The question you have asked is difficult to answer because the answer is involved, but let me try.
A police officer is certified by the state. He can only enforce state laws. If he is charging a crime wherein there is a law that is covered by both a state and a federal statute, the police officer can only charge the state law, because he is not a federal officer (such as FBI). Conversely, a federal officer cannot charge a violator with a state law violation.
What generally happens is that if a bad guy has violated a law that is applicable to both state and federal statutes, a police officer will file his case with the district attorney. The district attorney’s office now has the option of conducting the prosecution (under state statutes) or offering it to the feds to see if they might want to conduct the prosecution under federal statutes.
A state district attorney will do this, usually, because federal sentences are usually more harsh than state sentences. Also, federal prisons are the pits.
The feds have the option of filing the case in federal court or kicking it back to the state court. The factors contributing to the decisions to prosecute or pass it on are predicated on how much publicity
the case might generate, how big a dirt bag the criminal is, how big of a case load the respective agencies have that month and/or how strong the case is. Any or all of these factors might come into play. Once a case gets into the court system, where it ends up and how it gets there are pretty subjective decisions.
Hope that I have answered your question. If not, email me and I’ll try again. And yes, there are a lot of state laws that differ from federal law. Example: Murder. There is no federal statute for murder. This is why the federal government passed the IFLAP law which stands for Interstate Flight
to Avoid Prosecution. See, the FBI cannot investigate a murder that takes place (lets say) in Iowa.
However, if the murder flees across the Kansas state line, now we have an IFLAP and the FBI can
assist with the investigation.
See how complicated it is? Hope I helped.
Answer by Leslie S:Paul S gets it right.
It actually becomes more complicated sometimes.
I have sat in on a number of cases where an Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) has argued with with a deputy prosecutor over who will take the individual to trial first, what each will charge with and what strategy will be used (they often do not want to let out info to be used at their own trial).
As far as UFAP (what Paul called UFLAP) I have never seen one of our local/Fed case actually tried for that. They usually issue a UFAP on our local request to them. Once they pick him up the Marshals transport him back to our state. The Feds then drop the UFAP and we arrest the bad guy.
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