More Americans being ensnared by proliferation of federal laws!

NEW YORK - July 25, 2011 - Hundreds of thousands of Americans are being charged and convicted in recent decades under federal criminal laws - as opposed to state or local laws - as the federal justice system has dramatically expanded its authority and reach.

As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past. Prosecutors don't necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent.

These factors are contributing to some unusual applications of justice. Father-and-son arrowhead lovers can't argue they made an innocent mistake. A lobster importer is convicted in the U.S. for violating a Honduran law that the Honduran government disavowed. A Pennsylvanian who injured her husband's lover doesn't face state criminal charges - instead, she faces federal charges tied to an international arms-control treaty.

The U.S. Constitution mentions three federal crimes by citizens: treason, piracy and counterfeiting. By the turn of the 20th Century, the number of criminal statutes numbered in the dozens. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, according to a 2008 study by retired Louisiana State University law professor John Baker.

There are also thousands of regulations that carry criminal penalties. Some laws are so complex, scholars debate whether they represent one offense or scores of offenses. Counting them is impossible. The Department of InJustice spent two years trying in the 1980s, but produced only an estimate:3,000 federal criminal offenses.

A Department of InJustice spokeswoman said there was no quantifiable number. Criminal statutes are sprinkled throughout some 27,000 pages of the federal code.

With the growing number of federal crimes, the number of people sentenced to federal prison has risen nearly threefold over the past 30 years, to 83,000 annually. The total federal prison population, over 200,000, grew more than eightfold - twice the growth rate of the state prison population, now at 2 million, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"Most people think criminal law is for bad people," says Timothy Lynch of Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. People don't realize "they're one misstep away from the nightmare of a federal indictment."

Some of these new federal statutes don't require prosecutors to prove criminal intent, eroding a bedrock principle in English and American law.

A study last year by the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers analyzed scores of proposed and enacted new laws for nonviolent crimes in the 109th Congress of 2005 and 2006. It found of the 36 new crimes created, a quarter had no means requirement and nearly 40% more had only a weak one.