Opinion ID: 362346
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jurisdiction Over The Crime

Text: 96 The defendants urge that the United States lacked competence to prescribe rules making their conduct on the high seas criminal. A necessary condition to the competence of a state to enforce its laws is that it have capacity to prescribe them. Restatement (Second) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States § 7(2) (1965). The United States has long adhered to the objective principle of territorial jurisdiction, which holds that it has jurisdiction to attach criminal consequences to extraterritorial acts that are intended to have effect in the United States, 38 at least where overt acts within the United States can be proved. Ford v. United States, 273 U.S. 593, 620, 47 S.Ct. 531, 540, 71 L.Ed. 793 (1927); United States v. Cadena,585 F.2d 1252, 1257-58 (5th Cir. 1978); United States v. Winter, 509 F.2d 975, 981 (5th Cir.), Cert. denied sub nom. Parks v. United States, 423 U.S. 825, 96 S.Ct. 39, 46 L.Ed.2d 41 (1975); Rivard v. United States, 375 F.2d 882, 886 (5th Cir.), Cert. denied sub nom. Groleau v. United States, 389 U.S. 884, 88 S.Ct. 151, 19 L.Ed.2d 181 (1967); Cf. Strassheim v. Daily, 221 U.S. 280, 284-85, 31 S.Ct. 558, 560, 55 L.Ed. 735 (1911) (interstate extradition). The United States has exercised this competence in enacting the statutes under which the defendants were convicted, 21 U.S.C. §§ 846,963 (1976), which prohibit conspiracies to distribute and import controlled substances. Implicit in these prohibitions, taken together, is that they apply extraterritorially. See United States v. Bowman, 260 U.S. 94, 98, 43 S.Ct. 39, 41, 67 L.Ed. 149 (1922); Brulay v. United States, 383 F.2d 345, 349-50 (9th Cir.), Cert. denied, 389 U.S. 986, 88 S.Ct. 469, 19 L.Ed.2d 478 (1967). As we said in United States v. Cadena, 585 F.2d at 1259, Congress intended that (21 U.S.C. § 963) apply to persons who commit(ted) acts or a series of acts that at least commenced outside the territorial limits of the United States. Therefore, if an overt act committed within the United States was proved by the Government, 39 the defendants fall within the proscriptions of sections 846 and 963. 97 The record indicates that defendant Chitty directed the outfitting of the La Rosa in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in late June 1976. Record, vol. 2, at 18-22. Payment was tendered in Fort Lauderdale, Id. at 22-25, and approximately $21,000 of the $153,000 purchase price was paid by Chitty in cash, Id. at 22-23. 40 The record further indicates that the La Rosa was delivered in Bimini on July 3, Id. at 25, and that Postal and Chitty flew to Bimini on that date, Id., vol. 3, at 110. The La Rosa's logbook, which was introduced into evidence at trial, 41 shows that she left Bimini on or about July 4. Id. at 78. She then sailed to South America where the marijuana was presumably obtained, and then she returned, arriving back off the Bahamas on September 13. 42 She continued southwesterly toward Miami and then along the Florida Keys where she was boarded and seized by the Coast Guard on September 15. 98 The indictment against the defendants charges the purchase of the La Rosa in Fort Lauderdale as an overt act under both conspiracy counts. The defendants contend that the Government did not prove that a conspiracy existed among them at the time of the purchase of the La Rosa and therefore that the act of purchasing her cannot constitute an act in furtherance of the conspiracy. See United States v. Easom, 569 F.2d 457, 459 (8th Cir. 1978). We think the evidence in the record, although circumstantial, is sufficient to support a finding that a conspiracy existed when the La Rosa was purchased. 99 The defendants set sail for South America within a day of the delivery of the La Rosa in Bimini. Within ten weeks she returned to the Bahamas with some four tons of marijuana on board. Construing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Government and indulging all reasonable inferences in its favor, Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1942); United States v. Alonzo, 571 F.2d 1384, 1387 (5th Cir. 1978), we find this evidence sufficient to eliminate every reasonable hypothesis that the conspiracy had not been formed at the time the La Rosa was purchased. See United States v. Bobo, 586 F.2d 355, 368-69 (5th Cir. 1978). The only conceivable hypothesis that the La Rosa was purchased for innocent purposes is that the cruise to South America was not originally undertaken to obtain the marijuana but that the opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Given the magnitude of the enterprise and the deliberateness with which it was carried out, we do not believe the reasonableness of this hypothesis is compelled as a matter of law. We therefore hold that the court below had jurisdiction over the conspiracies charged against the defendants.