Barrett v. United States · ¶29
Subsection (j) gave federal prosecutors tools they lacked both in the pre-existing subsection (c) and in the pre-existing murder and manslaughter statutes. Subsection (c) does not authorize the death penalty, for example. Subsection (j) thus raised the ceiling of punishments § 924 authorized, and, in doing so, offered prosecutors fexibility of another sort: time. See § 3281 (“An indictment for any offense punishable by death may be found at any time without limitation”). Section 1111—the general federal murder statute—did already authorize the death penalty. But its jurisdictional reach, as well as that of the manslaughter statute (§ 1112), is limited to “the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” §§ 1111(b), 1112(b).The new subsection (j) had no such geographical limitation; it borrowed instead subsection (c)'s broader jurisdictional hook. So subsection…Read in context ›
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