Opinion ID: 770249
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: I Facts 3 In early 1992 Lee contacted Weng Yu Hui, an alien smuggler or snakehead, asking him to provide Chinese nationals to be smuggled to the United States. Lee expected to be paid $15,000 for each person smuggled. The original plan called for the Chinese passengers to travel on a ship called the Nadj II from Thailand to the United States, but that ship was forced to moor off the coast of Kenya while its 300 passengers were stranded on board with inadequate food and supplies for five months. Lee admits that during this time, the Nadj II's life preservers were sold to buy food and other necessities. 4 Defendant then orchestrated the purchase and refitting of a second ship, the Golden Venture, which arrived from Singapore to pick up the stranded passengers off the coast of Kenya. Though the Golden Venture was a cargo ship not licensed to carry passengers, it was already carrying between 90 and 100 Chinese nationals when it arrived in Africa where some 200 of the Nadj II's passengers joined them to continue their voyage to the United States on the Golden Venture. 5 Once aboard, the passengers were confined to a 20 foot by 40 foot cargo hold that had only one ladder leading to the deck. Water and food were severely rationed, and there was no water for personal hygiene. The ship had only one toilet, the use of which was restricted to the crew, the Chinese managers of the venture, and the few women passengers on board. It had no life preservers and only two lifeboats, which in turn were adequate to carry only the (unusually small) crew of 14. Passengers who questioned the arrangements were beaten. The 298 passengers spent between three and six months (depending whether they had boarded in Asia or in Kenya) on the ship as it wended its way to the United States. 6 Lee, who was then in New York, had hoped initially that he could arrange for small boats to rendezvous with the Golden Venture in the Atlantic to pick up the passengers and transport them to shore. When this plan fell through, he instructed the Golden Venture to approach the New York harbor. Defendant ordered Kin Sin Lee, whom he had hired to travel on the Golden Venture and oversee its day-to-day operations, via ship-to-shore radio, to ground the ship at full speed in the dead of night off the coast of Rockaway Point in Queens. Lee also told Kin Sin Lee to tell the passengers that those who could swim should jump off the ship and swim ashore when the boat was grounded, while the others should wait for someone to pick them up. No other arrangements were made for disembarking the passengers. 7 Beginning about midnight on June 6, 1993, the crew began its efforts to ground the ship. After twice beginning to speed for the shore and then realizing that the location was unsuitable, the ship finally picked a spot on the ocean or surf side of Rockaway Point and at about 3:00 a.m. ran the ship aground. The passengers' only warning that the ship was being grounded had been given some 12 hours earlier, when they were told to brace themselves. Chaos ensued. Some passengers jumped into the rough water, which was below 60F, and ten of them, as earlier noted, drowned or died of hypothermia. II Proceedings in the Trial Court 8 Lee pled guilty to three counts on March 11, 1998: conspiracy to smuggle aliens, 18 U.S.C. §371, smuggling aliens, 8 U.S.C. §1324(a)(1), and seaman's manslaughter, 18 U.S.C. §1115. He does not challenge the first two convictions. On December 1, 1998 the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Raggi, J.) convicted Lee of violating §1115. That section provides in relevant part 9 Every captain, engineer, pilot, or other person employed on any steamboat or vessel, by whose misconduct, negligence, or inattention to his duties on such vessel the life of any person is destroyed, and every owner, charterer, inspector, or other public officer, through whose fraud, neglect, connivance, misconduct, or violation of law the life of any person is destroyed, shall be fined ... or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. 10 After his plea allocution, Lee submitted papers to the district court contending, among other things, that he had not correctly described the events leading up to the Golden Venture's grounding. The trial court held an evidentiary hearing on these assertions and on Lee's related motion to withdraw his guilty plea. The only factual argument defendant presses on appeal is that he did not, in fact, instruct the ship to ground on the ocean or surf side of Rockaway Point. Rather, Lee testified at the post-allocution hearing, he had told those in charge of the ship to ground it on the bay side. He said that he made this distinction because he had visited the area and observed that the bay side was sandy, rather than rocky, and that the water on the bay side was much calmer. Lee did not present any other evidence as to the relative safety of the two locations. The district court explicitly found this testimony not credible and found, in addition, with respect to a requested sentencing enhancement for obstruction of justice, that the distinction between the two locations was not material. 11 Lee was thereupon sentenced to a five-year term on each of the alien smuggling counts and to ten years on the manslaughter count. These sentences were imposed consecutively to make a total of 20 years' imprisonment. The ten-year manslaughter sentence represented a substantial upward departure from the 33-month upper limit of the Sentencing Guideline range. Lee appeals both his conviction and sentence for manslaughter.