Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/553

INTERSTATE CRIME AND EXTRADITION. 533 the act of shooting or unlawfully using a deadly weapon within the State, as in the preseant case. In some instances they may be concur- rent jurisdiction of the whole offence, and in others there may exist the jurisdiction of an attempt in one State and of the consummated offence in another." It seems quite clear that statutes should be generally adopted giving concurrent jurisdiction of offences as a whole both in the State in which the criminal act is set in motion and the State in v/hich the crime is consummated. Such a statute exists in the State of California, and one substantially similar in terms is also a part of the law of New York. The California Penal Code pro- vides that " all persons who commit, in whole or in part, any crime within that State are liable to punishment within its laws." Under the authority of this law, the trial of Mrs. Botkin has just been concluded, and she has been convicted of murder upon the theory that she deposited poisoned candy in the mail within the State of California directed to a person in the State of Delaware, where it was received by the latter, who died from eating it. There was some discussion on the trial, and the question will doubtless be argued elaborately on appeal, whether the cause of the Penal Code sufficiently covered the case. The statute might have been more specifically phrased, but it is difficult to understand just what its language referred to if not to such a case as that of Mrs. Botkin, and certainly the signification given to it was in the interests of justice. The provision of the New York Penal Code (section i6) is that a person is punishable criminally "who commits within the State any crime, in whole or in part." It is probable that, in New York as well as in California, the provision in question would be held to apply to a person setting a crime in motion within a State, to take effect outside, but if such statutes are inadequate in form they should be amended to meet the necessity. A criticism that maybe made upon such proposed policy is that it might result in a person being tried twice for the same offence. The force of this suggestion lies in the fact that the constitutions of a few of the States do not contain a second jeopardy clause. Nevertheless it still would seem to be a less evil to recognize jurisdiction of the crime in both the States than to let the criminal go scot-free, as seems to have been the ultimate result in State v. Hall isuprd). Even though one of two States concerned did not have a second jeopardy provision, there is slight probability that