Criminal Law FAQ #6
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Ordinary crime has long been considered to be the concern of state government. States are authorized to protect their citizens from criminal activity by prosecution of common law and legislatively created crimes. The federal government, on the other hand, has a limited jurisdiction and must link any crimes it prosecutes to its powers under the Constitution. The most commonly used powers to support federal criminal legislation are the commerce power, the taxing power, and the postal power. While Congress has used these powers all along to define crimes, there has been an explosion of federally created crimes in the last half of the 20th century. Most of the laws controlling white-collar crime, like the RICO Act and the Victims and Witnesses Protection Act have been passed since 1950. In addition, Congress has become increasingly involved in the "war on drugs" with the creation of various drug statutes. Due to the severity of the penalties, many local prosecutors prefer to have drug charges prosecuted in federal court rather than file state charges. Most federal laws have as their rationale that the particular crime addressed needs a uniform response from the whole country or that it would be impossible to prosecute on a state-by-state basis. Federal gun laws provide uniformity, and federal computer laws make it possible to punish Internet crime.
The federal Constitution has always played a role in criminal law because it defines important individual rights that must be preserved even in a state prosecution of a state crime. The right to a trial by jury in open court, the right to cross-examine witnesses, the right to remain silent, the presumption of innocence, the right to be represented by a lawyer, and the right to be free of cruel or unusual punishment, are part of every state legal system in part because they are guaranteed by the Constitution. States are required to pay for attorneys for indigent offenders, and federal judges provide oversight to state prisons because of these constitutional requirements.
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