WASHINGTON — A scorned woman’s attempt to poison her romantic rival has for the second time raised enough constitutional questions to garner the Supreme Court’s attention.
The court announced Friday that it would consider again the case against Carol Anne Bond.
Bond, a Pennsylvania microbiologist, had tried to harm her best friend after learning that the woman was pregnant with a child fathered by Bond’s husband, Clifford.
Bond had spread toxic chemicals on her friend’s car door and mailbox, but Myrlinda Haynes suffered only a moderate injury to her fingers.
Federal authorities prosecuted Bond under a terrorism law intended to enforce an international treaty: the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.
Such a prosecution, Bond’s attorney told the court, intruded on the police powers reserved to the states.
“A domestic dispute culminating in a thumb burn is not an obvious candidate for a federal prosecution, let alone one under a statute designed to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention," wrote Bond’s attorney, former George W. Bush administration solicitor general Paul Clement.
“But such prosecutions are the inevitable result of the government’s view of its unlimited authority under the treaty power."
