Opinion ID: 426379
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Conditional Pleas of Guilty

Text: 22 Following these rulings, each defendant entered a conditional plea of guilty to one count of violation of Sec. 955a(a), and the government agreed to the dismissal of the conspiracy count. With the approval of the court, the parties stipulated that defendants reserved their right to appeal the lawfulness of the Coast Guard's seizure of the marijuana.II. ISSUES PRESERVED FOR APPEAL 23 On this appeal defendants pursue their contentions that the United States lacks jurisdiction to prosecute them and that the actions of the Coast Guard violated their Fourth Amendment rights. 6 The stipulation pursuant to which the pleas of guilty were entered conditioned those pleas on defendants' being permitted to reserve and raise only the following issue on appeal from the judgment herein, i.e. the lawfulness of the Coast Guard's seizure of approximately 20 tons of marijuana from the hold of the 'Ricardo' on June 27, 1982. The narrowness of this stipulation creates questions as to whether defendants are entitled to pursue their jurisdictional and constitutional challenges on appeal. A. The Jurisdictional Question 24 In its brief, the government has suggested that defendants' challenge to the jurisdiction of the United States to prosecute them is improper because it is beyond the issue of seizure preserved by the stipulation. We reject the government's suggestion. 25 A question as to the court's jurisdiction to try a defendant may be raised at any time during the pendency of the proceedings. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 12(b). Accordingly, in ruling in particular cases that a defendant who has pleaded guilty has waived his right to appeal or that his conditional plea has preserved only the specifically mentioned issues and waived all others, we have taken care to specify that the waiver applies only to defects that are non-jurisdictional. E.g., United States v. Doyle, 348 F.2d 715, 718-19 (2d Cir.) (quoting United States v. Spada, 331 F.2d 995, 996 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 865, 85 S.Ct. 130, 13 L.Ed.2d 67 (1964)), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 843, 86 S.Ct. 89, 15 L.Ed.2d 84 (1965). Since it is a responsibility of the appellate court no less than of the trial court to see to it that the jurisdiction of the trial court, which is defined and limited by statute, is not exceeded, Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149, 152, 29 S.Ct. 42, 43, 53 L.Ed. 126 (1908), and since the stipulation is construed infra to preserve issues of fact and law arising from the stopping and boarding of the RICARDO as well as the seizure of marijuana, we will entertain on appeal defendants challenge to the court's jurisdiction. B. The Constitutional Issues 26 Notwithstanding the stipulation's preservation of the right to appeal only the lawfulness of the Coast Guard's seizure of the marijuana from the hold of the RICARDO, defendants have proceeded to challenge the lawfulness not only of the seizure itself but also of the Coast Guard's stopping and boarding of the vessel. The government properly notes that the defendants have no Fourth Amendment right to challenge only the seizure. As crew members of the RICARDO having no proprietary interest in the vessel's cargo and having no legitimate expectation of privacy in its cargo hold, defendants have no personal rights to vindicate in challenging the Coast Guard's search of the cargo hold or the seizure of the marijuana, and such a challenge would be rejected on that ground. See United States v. Salvucci, 448 U.S. 83, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1980); Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 99 S.Ct. 421, 58 L.Ed.2d 387 (1978); United States v. Streifel, 665 F.2d 414, 419 n. 6 (2d Cir.1981); United States v. Williams, 589 F.2d 210, 214 (5th Cir.1979). 27 The government has not, however, disputed as unauthorized by the stipulation defendants' appeal from the district court's rulings upholding the Coast Guard's stopping and boarding of the RICARDO. In the circumstances, we shall, on this occasion, give the parties to the stipulation the benefit of the doubt and infer that they and the court understood that defendants were to preserve their right to challenge such actions leading to the seizure as they had the right to challenge, i.e., the Coast Guard's stopping and boarding of the RICARDO. 7 In the future, however, we shall expect the parties to use care and precision in framing the issues to be preserved for appeal.