Published on: Friday, February 11, 2022

A law allowing U.S. authorities to arrest and prosecute certain foreign nationals for drug crimes committed in international waters unconstitutionally extends U.S. jurisdiction beyond the limits of international law, the First Circuit held (article available here). 

As the Coast Guard interdicted a small speed boat in the western Caribbean Sea near Colombia the three occupants began throwing packages and fuel barrels overboard. The master of the vessel claimed Costa Rican nationality for it. The officers boarded and searched the vessel pursuant to a provision of an agreement between the U.S. and Costa Rica, and a chemical test detected traces of cocaine.

Costa Rica said it couldn’t confirm or refute the vessel’s registry. The U.S. thus determined that under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act, the boat was “without nationality” and subject to U.S. jurisdiction. The defendants were each charged with two counts of trafficking cocaine. Two of them brought constitutional challenges against the MDLEA.

A provision of the MDLEA expands the definition of a “vessel without nationality” beyond the bounds of international law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held, vacating the defendants’ convictions.

Congress lacks the constitutional authority to extend U.S. jurisdiction to felonies committed by foreign nationals on foreign vessels, the court said.

The MDLEA violates this principle when it contradicts international law by treating another country’s failure to supply an “affirmative and unequivocal” confirmation of nationality “as evidence sufficient to invalidate an oral claim of foreign nationality even when there are no mixed signals that would call the claim into doubt,” the court said.

The cases are United States v. Davila-Reyes, No. 16-02089, and United States v. Reyes-Valdivia, No. 16-02143 (1st Cir. Jan. 20, 2022).