Opinion ID: 275484
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: As to the Substantive Count

Text: 17 Count two charged Rivard with causing seventy-six pounds of heroin to be brought into the United States. 11 Did the District Court have jurisdiction over Rivard for this substantive offense? 12 18 The smuggling of heroin into the United States was the object of the conspiracy. It is inconceivable that the District Court could have jurisdiction over a defendant presently before the court to try him for a conspiracy formed outside the United States, whose object was to smuggle heroin into the United States, but not have jurisdiction to try him for the smuggling itself, which was the very object and fruition of the conspiracy. 19 All the nations of the world recognize the principle that a man who outside of a country willfully puts in motion a force to take effect in it is answerable at the place where the evil is done   . Moore, Report on Extraterritorial Crime and the Cutting Case, 1887 p. 23, U.S. For. Rel., 1887, 757, 771. The United States recognized this principle through Mr. Justice Holmes in Strassheim v. Daily, 1911, 221 U.S. 280, 285, 31 S.Ct. 558, 55 L.Ed. 735, where he said: 20 Acts done outside a jurisdiction, but intended to produce and producing detrimental effects within it, justify a state in punishing the cause of the harm as if he had been present at the effect, if the state should succeed in getting him within its power. 21 When Rivard was extradited to the United States and came within the power of the District Court, he became subject to Holmes' rule. 22 There is nothing in the objective territorial principle announced in Strassheim, Ford and Marin which creates a jurisdictional distinction between a substantive offense and a conspiracy. International law did not prohibit the District Court from assuming jurisdiction over all defendants and offenses alleged in this case and the jurisdictional principles of the United States announced in Strassheim, Ford and Marin permitted the Court to do so. We conclude that, when a substantive offense is committed within the territorial limits of the United States, as the smuggling of the 76 pounds of heroin was here, the Court has jurisdiction over an alien principal 13 whose participation was all without those territorial limits.