A former U.S. attorney general says that the federal government is expanding its jurisdiction over crimes that used to be handled by state and local authorities.
by F.R. Duplantier
Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese says "two tragic events have fundamentally changed the way many Americans view federal law-enforcement agencies and jeopardized public confidence in the federal government itself." Ruby Ridge and Waco are the two events he has in mind -- the 1992 assault by U.S. marshals on Randy Weaver's remote mountaintop cabin, which killed Weaver's wife and son, and the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which resulted in the deaths of 85 men, women, and children. "Both these tragedies are the direct result of federal jurisdiction in crimes once considered wholly within the province of state and local police agencies," writes Meese in the current issue of Policy Review. "In neither incident did the underlying crime involve interstate activity or pose a threat to the federal government. Without the federalization of laws regulating firearms, a matter left to the states during most of our country's history, neither the BATF or FBI would have had jurisdiction at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and any law-enforcement actions would have been handled locally, if at all."
Ed Meese notes that there are now "more than 3,000 federal crimes on the books. Hardly any crime, no matter how local in nature, is beyond the jurisdiction of federal criminal authorities." Meese argues that most of these crimes "are already outlawed by the states and need not be duplicated in the federal criminal code." Federal courts have only made the crime problem worse. Meese contends that the "massive federalization of the rules of evidence greatly increased the rights of criminal defendants and further burdened law-enforcement agencies throughout the nation. In addition, the federal courts have virtually taken over such vital state functions as the operation of prisons and mental hospitals. By 1993, the federal courts operated 80 percent of all state prison systems in America."
Another contributing factor is "the criminalization of environmental and regulatory laws," says Ed Meese. "Most of these federalized environmental offenses occur entirely within a state and bear no connection to the federal government. Worse yet, these statutes are often so vague and complicated that some 'defendants' did not even realize that they had violated the law."
Former Attorney General Meese contends that "a major cause of the federalization of criminal law is the desire of some members of Congress to appear tough on crime, though they know well that crime is fought most effectively at the local level." Stiffer penalties and the possibility of capital punishment are major selling points for the federalization of crime, but Meese says these temptations should be resisted. "If longer sentences and the availability of the death penalty are needed to preserve public safety, " he says, "state governments are equally capable of enacting such measures to the extent their constituents so desire."
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