A jealous wife who tried to poison her husband's mistress, and was charged under an anti-terrorism law, lost her case before the U.S. Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit. Mrs. Bond, the accused, is a trained microbiologist who stole toxic chemicals from her employer and tried to use them in her attempt to murder. The concerned chemicals come under the category of “chemical weapons” according to an international chemical-weapons treaty. Under the Federal Chemical Weapons Act, it is a crime to obtain or use any ‘chemical weapon.' Mrs. Bond (quite the 007 type) had sprinkled lethal material in the mailbox, car door handles and house doorknob of her husband's mistress to kill her.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that federal prosecutors were not wrong in applying the anti-terrorism law in this particular case. Mrs. Bond had argued that the chemical-weapons treaty was for targeting terrorist activity and not for local crimes of a spurned lover. She also argued that applying the law in her case intruded upon the powers of the state's police as reserved under the Tenth Amendment.
However, the Court of Appeals admitted that questions remained that need to be addressed by the government upon the issue. Judge Kent Jordan, writing for the three-judge panel mentioned, “While Bond's prosecution seems a questionable exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and indeed appears to justify her assertion that this case trivializes the concept of chemical weapons, the treaty that gave rise to it was implemented by sufficiently related legislation.”
Previously, the 3rd Circuit had rejected Bond's appeal on the ground that the chemical weapons law was not open to challenge by an individual for intruding upon state powers. However, the Supreme Court overturned that decision and held that Bond, as an individual, had the power to challenge the law, as long as the law was made applicable to her in her capacity as an individual. So, the case returned before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
This time the Third Circuit resolved the issue by holding that the federal government was within its rights to enact the chemical weapons law according to international treaties for controlling the use of devastating chemical weapons.
However, Judge Marjorie Rendell described the government's decision to prosecute Bond's case under the chemical weapons law as ‘troubling.' In a separate concurrence, Judge Thomas Ambro called on the Supreme Court to clarify the boundaries of the federal government to enact laws that intrude on local activities, given that those who drafted the treaties could never have intended such an application.
The case is USA v. Bond, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, No. 08-2677.
