Will (local?) killer in Vermont challenge his federal capital prosecution?

I blog here yesterday about the decision by the Justice Department will to pursue federal death penalty charges against Michael Jacques, a Vermont sex offender accused of an awful rape/murder crime.  This updated local story about the case provides some useful additional information and commentary about the interesting federalism issues that the case raises:

Vermont does not have the death penalty, but Jacques is being charged under federal law because he allegedly used the Internet to both plan for and cover up the crime, according to police.  Because of that, the crime is considered to have crossed state borders, opening it up for federal prosecution.

This would be the third death penalty case in Vermont since the late 1990s.  A 1998 case involving a fatal bombing in Fair Haven had a death sentence attached, but the defendant later pleaded down for a life sentence in prison.  In 2005, Donald Fell was sentenced to death for the 2000 carjacking murder of a North Clarendon woman, who was kidnapped by Fell in Rutland and later killed in New York State. He now sits on death row.

Cheryl Hanna, a professor at the Vermont Law School, said the announcement was interesting because it is the first from the new Obama administration on the use of the death penalty in states that do not have one. "I suspect that we will see some kind of outcry from death penalty opponents over this decision, as we did with the Fell case," she said.

Hanna said it may well be that Jacques' defense questions the constitutionality of the law allowing the federal government to prosecute.  In the Fell case, the crime clearly crossed state borders, but here, Hanna explained, prosecutors are relying on a new law allowing them to step in because the crime allegedly involves the Internet.  "I would not be surprised if the defense questions the law itself here," she said.

This case is already starting to sound like fodder for a law school exam question: Is using the internet while planning a local crime sufficient to provide federal jurisdiction to prosecute that local crime?  Should it be?

Some related (and mostly dated) posts:

• Feds decide to seek death in local(?) killing in state without the death penalty
• "Death penalty decisions loom for Barack Obama"
• More support for an exclusively federal death penalty
• A poster child for the (federal) death penalty?
• The federal law gap in the NJ death penalty report
• The federal death penalty in America's paradise
• Ashcroft's death penalty "legacy"
• Expansion of the federal death penalty?