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Federal Bureau of Investigation Seal. The FBI is the main agency responsible for investigating federal offenses. In the United States, a federal crime or federal offense is an act that is made illegal by U.S. federal legislation enacted by both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives and signed into law by the president.
Offenses under United States federal law are grouped into different classes according to the maximum term of imprisonment defined within the statute for the offense. The classes of offenses under United States federal law are as follows:
Title 18 of the United States Code is the main criminal code of the federal government of the United States. [1] The Title deals with federal crimes and criminal procedure.In its coverage, Title 18 is similar to most U.S. state criminal codes, typically referred to by names such as Penal Code, Criminal Code, or Crimes Code. [2]
The federal government, the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and US territories such as Puerto Rico have their own penal codes. Statutes derive from the common law. For example, if a state's murder statute does not define "human being," its courts rely on the common-law definition. [7] [8
It noted that while the declaratory ruling pertained to the meaning of the term "indecency" as used in a criminal statute (18 USC 1464), since the FCC had not imposed any penalty on Pacifica, the Court did not need to reach the question as to whether the definition was too vague to satisfy the due process requirements of the Fifth Amendment. [7]
In some states, the elements of many crimes are defined mostly or entirely by common law, i.e., by prior judicial decisions. For instance, Michigan's penal code does not define the crime of murder: while the penalties for murder are laid out in statute, the actual elements of murder, and their meaning, is entirely set out in case law. [9] [10] [11]
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Money obtained from certain crimes, such as extortion, insider trading, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and illegal gambling is "dirty" and needs to be "cleaned" to appear to have been derived from legal activities, so that banks and other financial institutions will deal with it without suspicion. Money can be laundered by many methods ...