In 1999, Chris Muha's brother Brian, and Brian's roommate Aaron Land, were beaten and tortured in Ohio, kidnapped there, and driven to Pennsylvania and murdered by Terrell Yarbrough and an accomplice. Yarbrough's death sentence was just overturned by the Ohio Supreme Court (State v. Yarbrough, 104 Ohio St.3d 1 (2004)) on the grounds that Ohio has no jurisdcition over fatal shots fired in Pennsylvania. Chris Muha is a 2L at Yale, looking for some help with the issues.
If you are a lawyer, or a legal buff, consider reading the decision and motions, thinking about them, and giving the benefit of your thoughts to Chris Muha. Thorough post with details on this topic at Sentencing Law and Policy. Thanks to Orin Kerr at VC for the pointer.
My thoughts:
The Ohio Supreme Court excoriated the involved counsel and the trial judge, and was clearly unhappy about its own decision, but made it anyway - a case of a court following the law rather than its desires. That much, I applaud.
Too bad they got it wrong. They over-read part (B) of Ohio R.C. 2901.11 and ignored another part ((A)(2)). That statute reads:
“(A) A person is subject to criminal prosecution and punishment
in this state if any of the following occur:
“(1) The person commits an offense under the laws of this state,
any element of which takes place in this state.
“(2) While in this state, the person conspires or attempts to
commit, or is guilty of complicity in the commission of, an offense in another
jurisdiction, which offense is an offense under both the laws of this state and the other jurisdiction."(B) In homicide, the element referred to in division (A)(1) of
this section is either the act that causes death, or the physical contact that causes death, or the death itself."
They read too broadly, holding (B) to mean not only homicide, per se, but also all manner of offenses that include a homicide (felony murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder). (B) is drafted to refer only to the actual killing act of a discrete homicide, with no reference to conspiracy, complicity or attempt. I see no reason to read the restriction into crimes it doesn't address.
But the court went on to say that Yarbrough cannot be tried for the muders at all because (B) prohibits it. My reading of the statute leaves (A)(2) available. It says there is jurisdiction if "any of the following occur"; (A)(2) is "one of the following." I read that to allow prosecution of the complicity to commit murder, at least.
And there was a fully-formed conspiracy to commit murder in Ohio, on the way to Pennsylvania, over which the state should have jurisdiction under (A)(2), regardless of where the murders actually occured.
I don't think the court's reasoning is sound.
Time for some federal intervention. Anyone else agree that 18 USC 2119 applies:
"Whoever, with the intent to cause death or serious bodily harm[,] takes a motor vehicle that has been transported, shipped, or received in interstate or foreign commerce from the person or presence of another by force and violence or by intimidation, or attempts to do so, shall. . .
(3) if death results, be fined under this title or imprisoned for any number of years up to life, or both, or sentenced to death."
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