Sex, Ducks and the Founding Feud

25m
Jilted lovers and disrupted duck hunts provide a very odd look into the soul of the US Constitution.

What does a betrayed lover’s revenge have to do with an international chemical weapons treaty? More than you’d think. From poison and duck hunts to our feuding fathers, we step into a very odd tug of war between local and federal law.

When Carol Anne Bond found out her husband had impregnated her best friend, she took revenge. Carol's particular flavor of revenge led to a US Supreme Court case that puts into question a part of the US treaty power.

Producer Kelsey Padgett drags Jad and Robert into Carol's poisonous web, which starts them on a journey from the birth of the US Constitution, to a duck hunt in 1918, and back to the present day. It’s all about an ongoing argument that might actually be the very heart and soul of our system of government.

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Runtime: 25m

Transcript

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Speaker 4 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 4 All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan.

Speaker 4 Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 1 Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Latzif Nasser.
And ever since I came to this country, the United States, and became a citizen here,

Speaker 1 one thing you notice is that everyone is always arguing about who gets to decide. There's this constant power play in this country between the federal government and the state governments.

Speaker 1 And it's like no matter what issue you are looking at, whether it's immigration or climate change or AI regulation or, you know, a million other things,

Speaker 1 somehow there's this question of who gets to decide, who gets power over what.

Speaker 1 And honestly, I just get so tired of that conversation. It feels super important.
It's obviously very high stakes, but it can get so tedious and technical and it just makes your eyes glaze over.

Speaker 8 So

Speaker 1 today,

Speaker 1 I want to play for you a story that when I first heard it, it just made that question

Speaker 1 pop out at me in a completely different way. It made that question actually interesting, and it told it in a way that was actually a little bit scandalous.

Speaker 1 We originally released this episode back in 2013. I'm excited for you to hear it or rehear it.
The episode is called Sex, Ducks, and the Founding Feud.

Speaker 6 Enjoy.

Speaker 6 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 5 You are listening

Speaker 5 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 5 Radio Lab. From Greenwood.

Speaker 9 W-N-Y-C.

Speaker 10 Greenwine.

Speaker 11 Today on the podcast, Robert, we're going to talk

Speaker 11 constitutional law, federalism, and the intricacies of international treaty practice.

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 5 God. You ready? No, no, no.
No, it's going to be good.

Speaker 6 It's going to be good. It's going to be good.
Because I have health.

Speaker 7 Hey, guys.

Speaker 5 Hi, Kelsey. Hello.

Speaker 11 Kelsey Badgett has reported this segment, and just listen to how it starts.

Speaker 12 So this story starts with a betrayed spouse.

Speaker 13 Ooh, we see. Oh, that's much better.
I'm coming back to my seat.

Speaker 7 Get the popcorn.

Speaker 9 My name's Duncan Hollis.

Speaker 12 He's not the betrayed spouse.

Speaker 9 Nope. I'm a professor of international law here at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Speaker 10 And I'm Nick Rosencrans. And not him either.
I'm a professor of law at Georgetown. I'm also a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
So Mrs. Bond...

Speaker 12 That's her. That's our betrayed spouse.

Speaker 9 Carolyn Bond.

Speaker 12 36. Lives in a suburb of Philly.

Speaker 10 Discovered that her husband was having an affair with her neighbor.

Speaker 12 Actually, it was worse than that. This woman is her best friend.

Speaker 12 And not only that,

Speaker 9 she finds out that her friend is pregnant via her husband.

Speaker 12 He got her pregnant.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God.

Speaker 12 yeah and this is her best friend and her husband of 14 years you know she was quite upset distraught enraged i would imagine yeah carol made threats there were confrontations the other woman is named merlinda haines by the way and eventually

Speaker 10 carol ann bond she did what anyone would do she got a bunch of toxic chemicals and i do it all the time

Speaker 12 and She tried to poison her best friend repeatedly.

Speaker 5 Whoa.

Speaker 11 Back up for a second. Where would she have gotten the chemicals from?

Speaker 5 She worked, I believe, at a lab.

Speaker 7 She works for a chemical company.

Speaker 9 I think it's Roman Haas.

Speaker 13 So she's a biochemist.

Speaker 12 She's actually a microbiologist, but she grabs some chemicals from her office.

Speaker 9 I think she also orders some off the internet.

Speaker 12 Amazon.com.

Speaker 9 But they're pretty serious chemicals.

Speaker 5 Like what?

Speaker 9 Well, one was arsenic-based. And in large enough doses, and when I say large doses, I'm talking teaspoons, not gallons.
It can, you know, cause serious injury and can be fatal.

Speaker 12 So anyway, she took these chemicals, she went over to her best friend's, or well, her former best friend's house.

Speaker 10 And she spread them on the doorknob and on the mailbox, the door to her car.

Speaker 9 And they're visible, I guess. I guess you can see them.

Speaker 11 So the best friend isn't fooled.

Speaker 9 Nope. She calls actually the local police.
The local police tell her to take her car to a car wash. They said, oh, it, you know, it could be drugs.
We'll get the car washed off.

Speaker 12 They kind of just blow her off, but it keeps happening.

Speaker 12 Over the course of like half a year, this happens 24 times.

Speaker 13 24 powder attacks.

Speaker 12 According to the court briefs, you know, the police were just not being very responsive.

Speaker 12 She called them over a dozen times and they tested it to see if it was cocaine, but once they figure out it wasn't, they didn't really do anything.

Speaker 12 So finally, she tells the post office.

Speaker 9 And it was the post office that actually sent out postal inspectors and they set up a hidden camera.

Speaker 12 And they videotaped Carol Ann Bond in the act.

Speaker 13 They get it on tape? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9 That's how they identify her as the person putting the chemicals, you know, on the mailbox.

Speaker 11 I didn't know the post office did stuff like that.

Speaker 9 To be honest, I didn't either.

Speaker 11 That's so

Speaker 11 I think of them so differently now.

Speaker 10 Yes, and I think if there's a moral to the story, it is do not mess with the mails.

Speaker 10 They take that very seriously.

Speaker 12 Actually, there's a whole lot more going on than just messing with the mail. Because of what happens next.

Speaker 12 So, according to Nick Rosencrantz, generally things like assault or attempted murder.

Speaker 10 Those are state crimes.

Speaker 12 In most circumstances, the federal government can't charge charge you with murder.

Speaker 5 The post office, that's a federal institution.

Speaker 12 So when they caught Carol Ann Bond, they kicked this up to the federal attorney, who then went ahead and brought a federal case.

Speaker 11 And here's the thing.

Speaker 12 They ended up charging Carol Ann Bond with violating the International Chemical Weapons Treaty.

Speaker 10 What? We should be clear, the victim got a tiny thumb burn and ran cold water on it and was fine. So this is, we're not, this is

Speaker 10 this is not murder.

Speaker 5 But it makes this all the more odd.

Speaker 10 Very odd.

Speaker 13 When I poison someone, the last thing I'm thinking about is violating an international treaty.

Speaker 11 We should never have you over for lunch.

Speaker 13 But no, really, why would they charge you with that? I don't understand.

Speaker 12 Well, if you actually read the treaty.

Speaker 14 The statute simply says that it's a crime to use a toxic chemical for other than a peaceful purpose.

Speaker 12 That's the exact language. And that guy, that's John Bellinger.

Speaker 14 I served as the legal advisor for the Department of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice.

Speaker 12 And John says that even though it sounds a little weird, this is exactly what this treaty was meant for.

Speaker 14 For people using chemicals, highly toxic chemicals.

Speaker 12 For non-peaceful purposes.

Speaker 14 Exactly right.

Speaker 12 And that's what happened here. Imagine if she had killed a bunch of postal workers.

Speaker 14 Then... I don't think anybody would complain.

Speaker 13 But to charge her with an international treaty violation, it just seems, it seems too big for the little lady.

Speaker 12 It was really odd to her lawyers, too. I bet.

Speaker 12 They're like, look,

Speaker 12 in the Constitution, you have laid out what the federal government could do. This is not one of those things.

Speaker 12 You can't just take a treaty and use it to reach into the very local life of a normal person. That's a huge overreach.

Speaker 5 Sneaky, frankly.

Speaker 12 And now this case is before the Supreme Court. Oh.

Speaker 12 And it's become an ideological battle that goes way beyond Carol Ann Bond, her cheating husband, or her adulterous best friend.

Speaker 11 And I would argue that this case, as weird as it is, raises some really important issues about how the world is changing and about one of the most fundamental questions that is at the heart of America.

Speaker 11 I really believe that.

Speaker 13 Well, you have to defend that position. What do you mean?

Speaker 7 Let me take you back to the beginning, okay?

Speaker 8 Sure.

Speaker 8 My name is Joseph J. Ellis.
I am a historian. I've written a book called Founding Brothers, and my most recent book is called,

Speaker 5 what's it called?

Speaker 5 Revolutionary Summer.

Speaker 13 You are a modest man.

Speaker 11 So Joseph Ellis has written a, he's a pulled surprise-winning author, has written a bunch of books about the founding of our country,

Speaker 11 the Revolutionary War, and there is a scene in one of his books.

Speaker 8 A book called American Creation. Didn't sell as many as Founding Brothers.

Speaker 11 It doesn't matter to me because it has this one passage that when I read it,

Speaker 11 I was like, wow, I've never thought of this country that way. To set the scene.

Speaker 8 You want to be real specific. It's September.

Speaker 11 September 1787, Philadelphia.

Speaker 8 You know, it's abominably hot.

Speaker 11 Get all these great men crammed into a state house. I mean, George Washington.

Speaker 7 This guy is a stud.

Speaker 11 Six foot three, war hero.

Speaker 5 This guy is overwhelming.

Speaker 11 Alexander Hamilton was there.

Speaker 8 Hamilton, he would have got the highest grades on the LSATs. I'm telling you, this guy was really smart.

Speaker 11 Even Ben Franklin, who's pushing 81 at this point.

Speaker 5 Franklin's there. Oh.

Speaker 11 They all came together to try and figure out, like, how do we do this?

Speaker 11 Like, if you think about it, it was a puzzle because you've got these 13 colonies, which are really like sovereign nations.

Speaker 11 They were loosely organized into a federation that was about to go bankrupt, so they had to do something.

Speaker 11 So they're like, okay, let's bring them together into a union, but how do we do that without a king? It was a crazy experiment.

Speaker 8 Well, I mean, one thing you got to realize is that at that time in American history, the average person was born, lived out his or her life, and died within a 30-mile radius.

Speaker 8 They don't have cell phones, and they don't think about themselves as Americans.

Speaker 11 They thought of themselves as Pennsylvanians, South Carolinians, Bostonians.

Speaker 8 There is no real national ethos.

Speaker 11 So that's one problem. Second problem, the founding fathers could not agree, could not agree on the most basic question.
If there's not a king, who's in charge?

Speaker 5 Right?

Speaker 11 The so-called sovereignty question. And on the one hand, you had a guy like Alexander Hamilton who got up there and was like, why do we even need states?

Speaker 9 What's a state?

Speaker 11 All right. What we need is a federal government that is big and strong and powerful.

Speaker 5 That's Hamilton, baby.

Speaker 8 Hamilton wants a president elected for life. Hamilton wants a senator elected for life.

Speaker 11 On the other hand, you had the Thomas Jefferson school of thought, which was was like, no, no, we just got out of a monarchy, for Christ's sake.

Speaker 11 And the only way we're not going to get back in one is if we keep the government small, restricted, and all domestic policy belongs in the hands of the states. Sound familiar?

Speaker 8 Jefferson likes anything in which the government's not going to be doing much.

Speaker 11 So you had these two very different philosophies. And the way Joe sees it.

Speaker 8 If you let Jefferson have total power, we end up with anarchy. If you let Hamilton have total power, you're going to end up with a totalitarian state.

Speaker 11 At the convention, the two sides went back and forth. And anytime a Hamiltonian-type proposal hit the floor, some of the states would say,

Speaker 11 no, and they'd shoot it down because they did not want some big government telling them what to do, especially when the 800-pound gorilla in the room was slavery.

Speaker 11 So they couldn't agree at all. And into this mess walks our hero.

Speaker 11 James Madison.

Speaker 8 Madison, yeah, like Madison's 5'2 ⁇ , 120.

Speaker 15 Madison.

Speaker 8 He's the kind of guy that, you know, stands in the corners during a dance.

Speaker 8 You would call him a nerd.

Speaker 15 Madison.

Speaker 5 Or you might call him a pragmatist.

Speaker 8 Madison wants a clear decision about sovereignty.

Speaker 11 Yeah, like, for example, on local matters, who gets the final say, the states or the federal government? Just give me some clarity.

Speaker 5 And he's not going to get it.

Speaker 8 And he comes to that realization at the very end.

Speaker 11 Because at the end of the convention, they have this document. I mean, he wrote the original blueprint.

Speaker 11 Now there's this new document so riddled with compromises that, according to Joe, the basic question he wanted answered wasn't. The who's in charge question was left kind of vague.

Speaker 11 On all sorts of matters, I mean, who regulates money in banks? Who gets to tax what? Who decides whether new states will be slave states or free states? It was vague.

Speaker 11 And initially, according to Joe, in a letter that Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, he's like, come on.

Speaker 8 He's very disappointed.

Speaker 11 He thinks the document's going to fail and the country's going to fail.

Speaker 8 He doesn't think this is going to last.

Speaker 11 But then, Joe says, in his writings, you start to see a shift.

Speaker 8 He starts to think differently.

Speaker 8 He starts to say, oh yeah, wait a second. This could work precisely because it's unclear.
And we found what he calls a middle station.

Speaker 11 Where everyone can see what they want to see.

Speaker 8 I mean, people come out of the convention, go back to their states, and the guy in South Carolina says, don't worry about slavery. The 10th Amendment's going to tell us that they can't do that.

Speaker 8 The guy in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania says it's just a matter of time before we end slavery. The Constitution becomes successful because the people don't agree on what it means.

Speaker 11 That, according to Joe, was Madison's epiphany.

Speaker 8 The Constitution isn't a set of answers. It's a framework for argument.

Speaker 8 This is a document which allows us to continue to discuss and debate the core issues that we face, the powers of the presidency, the sovereignty question.

Speaker 8 The real resolution of the sovereignty question

Speaker 8 is never achieved. And

Speaker 5 it eventually leads to the Civil War.

Speaker 11 What I find kind of neat about this is that like that argument that happens in modern politics all the time about states' rights or the size of the government, which can feel like a random argument for me at times, suddenly to know this, I mean if you buy what Joe's saying, it's not random at all.

Speaker 11 This is an argument that was actually literally written into our founding document. In some sense, we, as a country, are the product of that argument.

Speaker 13 Of course, not everybody agrees with Joseph Ellis. There are people who think that the founding fathers had a very specific thing in mind.

Speaker 13 And if you just go back to their debates and to what they said to each other, that you can find the real

Speaker 13 only deep logic for the Constitution.

Speaker 11 But the fact that they disagree with Joe in some sense, doesn't that kind of make Joe's point?

Speaker 6 That you can read this document in 10 different ways.

Speaker 13 Yes, everyone always argues always.

Speaker 11 Just to pick up the thread, I mean, after the Civil War, the argument changes, it gets centered.

Speaker 13 But the Union is still an experiment.

Speaker 11 Yeah, Massachusetts can still do their business differently than Colorado, differently than Vermont.

Speaker 13 And the jostling between the federal government and the state government doesn't end. It just gets a little quieter, thank heavens.

Speaker 12 Unless you're a duck.

Speaker 1 Ducks right after this break.

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Speaker 1 Radiolab is supported by Apple TV. It's 1972.
A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

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Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 Just before the break, we were talking about how this whole country, the experiment that is the United States of America, has left us jostling between the federal government and the state governments.

Speaker 1 And Kelsey Padgett is about to tell us what all that has to do with ducks.

Speaker 12 So it's spring of 1919, rural Missouri. You've got Frank McAllister, the Attorney General of Missouri.
He's out there with a bunch of friends and they're pointing their guns at the sky and

Speaker 5 shooting ducks.

Speaker 10 One

Speaker 5 after another

Speaker 10 after another.

Speaker 10 And they end up shooting all in all 76.

Speaker 12 He knows he can do this because, you know, he's the attorney general of the state. He knows all the laws of the state.

Speaker 12 And he knows it's his right to shoot whatever duck is flying in the sky of Missouri.

Speaker 1 It's the state law that you can do.

Speaker 12 That's the state law. You can shoot the ducks.

Speaker 12 So they're out there, they're having this great time. They're having this great haul.
They've gotten all these ducks. And then out of nowhere,

Speaker 12 Ray Holland, the federal game warden, shows up and he says, No, you can't do this. You can't shoot these birds.

Speaker 7 They're not your property.

Speaker 12 McAllister says, f you.

Speaker 5 You're wrong.

Speaker 9 This is a matter for the state. You know, it's our sovereignty.
We never gave this over to the federal government.

Speaker 13 So he must have been like, I don't think the federal government has anything to say to me about a duck that was born here. At least

Speaker 13 I found it in the sky here. I shot it here.
It died here. And I'm going to eat it here.
This is my duck.

Speaker 12 But the game warden says, no, it's not your duck. And he arrests them all.
Setting up a landmark confrontation.

Speaker 12 Because here's what had happened. Two years earlier, the administration of Woodrow Wilson was sitting there wringing their hands, thinking, all these people are killing birds at like a non-stop pace.

Speaker 12 And if this didn't stop...

Speaker 9 You know, there was some concern at this period that we were going to, you know, we were going to hunt these things to extinction.

Speaker 9 You know, we might not have any migratory birds at all.

Speaker 12 Problem is, the courts had already told the federal government this is purely a local matter.

Speaker 5 You can't make federal hunting laws.

Speaker 12 But then, somebody in the administration has this really great idea or a really evil idea, depending on how you look at it.

Speaker 9 Maybe if we can get Canada to cooperate with us, we can do this by a treaty.

Speaker 12 Because there's this clause in the Constitution that says treaties are the supreme law of the land. So maybe if we make an international treaty, then the states will have to go along.

Speaker 12 Frank McAllister, he sues, and this goes all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 9 It lands before Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the more famous justices of the Supreme Court. And he basically says, the treaty power is something that was given to the federal government.

Speaker 9 Don't limit this. This treaty is good.
And the treaty and the legislation are upheld.

Speaker 11 So score one for the federal government.

Speaker 9 Score one for the federal government. And in there, you actually have Holmes talking about what the Constitution is.

Speaker 9 He was this, what, thrice-wounded Civil War veteran.

Speaker 9 And he actually invokes the language of the Civil War, saying, you know, we spent all this sweat and blood to figure out what kind of nation we were going to become.

Speaker 9 For birds, he invokes this language and basically says, whatever we had debated in the past, you know, could the states regulate slavery without federal interference?

Speaker 9 And Holmes says no. You know, the side who fought that argument, they lost.

Speaker 12 All this talk about birds and, you know, state versus federal has everything to do with our poisoner Carol Ann Bond.

Speaker 12 This case is the precedent upon which the federal government says that they can prosecute Carol Ann Bond because Oliver Wendell Holmes said that treaties are the supreme law of the land.

Speaker 13 I don't know.

Speaker 13 I'm still of the mind that this is a sneaky bit of business by

Speaker 13 the federal government.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's not sneaky if you're a duck.

Speaker 7 I feel I must speak on behalf of the ducks here.

Speaker 13 But no, forget your ducks. This is a Pennsylvania lady doing a Pennsylvania adultery in a Pennsylvania mailbox with a Pennsylvania mood.
I mean, there's nothing, there's no birds flying overhead.

Speaker 13 This is an all-Pennsylvania crime.

Speaker 12 But you know who wasn't doing a goddamn thing about that? Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 Exactly. Oh, oh.

Speaker 12 But just to take your side for a second, Robert.

Speaker 5 Please.

Speaker 12 If you really think about it, you know, and the way that Nick Rosencrantz thinks about it, this is really troubling.

Speaker 12 This decision seems to say that theoretically, the federal government's power is potentially infinite.

Speaker 12 Because, like, say, John Kerry, who's our Secretary of State right now, he goes and makes treaties.

Speaker 12 Say he's talking to Zimbabwe and we agree that we want to have a treaty about educational standards for children. So we come home and we write a law that says all children must go to public schools.

Speaker 12 But then that would outlaw homeschooling for children, which is a clear local state matter. But now suddenly the federal government has a power to do that.

Speaker 10 Just seems odd, the idea that the president, the senate, and Zimbabwe can increase Congress's legislative powers.

Speaker 12 Here's how John Bellinger responds.

Speaker 14 Is it a theoretical possibility that the federal government might try to go and do that? I suppose it's theoretically possible, but there's no evidence that that happened here.

Speaker 14 There's no evidence that that has happened in the 100 years since Missouri versus Holland.

Speaker 14 He He would say, look, consider the practical impact that a decision might have that would cut back on the president's treaty power.

Speaker 14 Other countries are already highly suspicious of the United States' ability to deliver on its treaty commitments anyway.

Speaker 12 John would say, why would any other country want to make a treaty with us if Kansas could back out at any time?

Speaker 11 And like, how do you deal with a question like global warming if everybody is allowed to be left to their own devices?

Speaker 13 Well,

Speaker 13 that's a tough one.

Speaker 11 I mean, the reality is...

Speaker 9 That's Duck and Hollis again. We live in a globalized world,

Speaker 9 whether it's, you know, dealing with things like climate change, terrorism, shipwrecks, cybercrime.

Speaker 9 Increasingly, these are things we can no longer regulate just within a particular local community or a local society.

Speaker 11 And like on some level, if we now find ourselves in this world where like I can get on the internet and spend hours and hours playing World of Warcraft with people in Yugoslavia, and yet I've never really talked to my neighbor that's just down the street.

Speaker 11 Like, why wouldn't we all have the same laws?

Speaker 10 But I think the flip side of your question is: fine, the world is very interconnected, but are there still some things that are local?

Speaker 10 Are there some things left where we could say the federal government doesn't need to be able to reach this?

Speaker 12 And more than that, Nick says that having a bunch of different communities that are governed by different rules, all under the same nation, actually has a bunch of benefits.

Speaker 10 Competition, the idea of laboratories of democracy, that the 50 states will all try different things as to regulating guns in your schools, as to regulating whatever it is, and maybe some state will hit on something brilliant.

Speaker 10 And if they do, then it will spread and be replicated. And that theory has been borne out in a lot of different areas.

Speaker 10 When the feds decide that they're going to come up with a one-size-fits-all national solution, that's the end of the experiment.

Speaker 5 So, by the way, what happened to Carolyn Bond?

Speaker 12 Well, she went to jail.

Speaker 13 She's in jail. She's still in jail.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 8 She's not now.

Speaker 13 So she could go to court and find out whether this thing was.

Speaker 5 That's cool. She could show up.

Speaker 11 What about the poison E?

Speaker 5 What happened to her?

Speaker 12 Poison E, she changed her name. She moved away.
She's unsearchable now.

Speaker 5 Good.

Speaker 5 I hope she moved to Zimbabwe.

Speaker 13 Is she still living with the guy that gave her the baby?

Speaker 12 No, no, no, no. You see, you see, Carol, even though she went to jail for six years, she stayed with her husband.

Speaker 13 No way. Really?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 13 She stayed with the man who had a baby with the other lady?

Speaker 12 Yeah, that she tried to poison that lady about. She stayed with that guy.

Speaker 13 See, that's the thing. Law is interesting, but love, that's complicated.
Love is greater than treaties.

Speaker 7 Thank you, Kelsey. Thank you.

Speaker 6 Kelsey Padgett.

Speaker 1 Robert Crowder, Robert College, Shadow Boom Rod.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Latz of here again. So a couple months after we released this episode, the Supreme Court did indeed make a decision in Carol Ann Bond's case.

Speaker 1 In a unanimous vote, the court decided that Carol did not violate the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty.

Speaker 1 But, you might remember, that was not the question that court watchers were hoping the court would answer. The question they were hoping to get an answer on was,

Speaker 1 can the federal government government use a treaty to make laws about crimes that would normally be within a state's jurisdiction, like poisoning? This decision did nothing to answer that question.

Speaker 1 So, lucky for us, we can keep arguing about it for another hundred years.

Speaker 1 That's it for this episode. Catch you next week.
And in the meantime, please don't poison your friends.

Speaker 16 Hi, I'm Belen, and I'm from San Diego, California. And here are the staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Abum Rod and is edited by Shora Newman. Ulu Miller and Letchmas Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 16 Dylan Keith is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 16 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Rebecca Lacks, Maria Paz-Gutiera, Shinju Nirnasumbundan, Matt Kealty, James Kewin, Alex Newson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandbat, Anissa Vitza, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, Molly Webster, Jessica Young, with help from Rebecca Rand.

Speaker 16 Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Anna Pujol-Mevini, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 17 Hi, I'm Edina. I'm calling from Greensburg.
Leadership support for Radio Lab science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 17 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P.

Speaker 16 Sloan Foundation.

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Speaker 5 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota. Let's go places.
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