State v. Norman

The defendants in these consolidated cases maintain that the State lacks jurisdiction to prosecute them for alleged crimes committed north of the 49th parallel, as located by present day geographers and surveyors, but south of the international boundary between the United States and Canada. Our state constitution provides that Washington State’s northern boundary in the relevant area is “west along said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude.” Const, art. XXTV, § 1. At the time the United States-Canada border was originally surveyed, prior to Washington’s admission into the Union as a state,…