U.S.A v. Belfast

Decision Date15 July 2010
Docket NumberNo. 09-10461.,09-10461.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,v.Roy M. BELFAST, Jr., a.k.a. Chuckie Taylor, a.k.a. Charles McArthur Emmanuel, a.k.a. Charles Taylor, Jr. a.k.a. Charles Taylor, II, Defendant-Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

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Tracy M. Dreispul, Miguel Caridad, Kathleen M. Williams, Arturo Menendez, Fed. Pub. Defenders, Miami, FL, for Defendant-Appellant.

Anne R. Schultz, Miami, FL, John Alex Romano, Dept. of Justice, Crim. Div., Appellate Section, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before BIRCH, MARCUS and BALDOCK,* Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

Roy M. Belfast, Jr., a/k/a Charles McArthur Emmanuel, a/k/a Charles Taylor, Jr., a/k/a Chuckie Taylor, II (Emmanuel), appeals his convictions and 97-year sentence for committing numerous acts of torture and other atrocities in Liberia between 1999 and 2003, during the presidency of his father, Charles Taylor. Emmanuel, who is the first individual to be prosecuted under the Torture Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2340-2340A (“the Torture Act), seeks reversal of his convictions on the ground that the Torture Act is unconstitutional. Primarily, Emmanuel contends that congressional authority to pass the Torture Act derives solely from the United States's obligations as a signatory to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, 1465 U.N.T.S. 85 (the “CAT”); he says the Torture Act impermissibly exceeds the bounds of that authority, both in its definition of torture and its proscription against conspiracies to commit torture. Emmanuel also challenges his convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which criminalizes the use or possession of a firearm in connection with a crime of violence. He says, among other things, that this provision cannot apply extraterritorially to his actions in Liberia. Finally, he claims that an accumulation of procedural errors made his trial fundamentally unfair, and that the district court erred in sentencing him.

After thorough review, we conclude that all of Emmanuel's convictions are constitutional. The United States validly adopted the CAT pursuant to the President's Article II treaty-making authority, and it was well within Congress's power under the Necessary and Proper Clause to criminalize both torture, as defined by the Torture Act, and conspiracy to commit torture. Furthermore, we hold that both the Torture Act and the firearm statute apply to extraterritorial conduct, and that their application in this case was proper. Finally, we conclude that Emmanuel's trial and the resulting convictions were not rendered fundamentally unfair by any evidentiary or other procedural errors, and that his sentence is without error. Accordingly, we affirm Emmanuel's convictions and sentence in all respects.

I.

The facts of this case are riddled with extraordinary cruelty and evil. The defendant, Charles McArthur Emmanuel, was born in Massachusetts in 1977, the son of Bernice Yolanda Emmanuel and Charles Taylor. Taylor returned to his native Liberia sometime thereafter. Emmanuel's mother married Roy Belfast in 1983. Apparently out of fear that Taylor would try to take her son, Bernice Emmanuel moved with him and Belfast to Orlando, FL. There, the couple also changed Emmanuel's name to Roy Belfast, Jr.

In 1992, Emmanuel visited Liberia, where a bloody civil war had been raging for three years. At the time of Emmanuel's visit, his father, Taylor, led the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (“NPFL”), an armed insurgent group. The NPFL was one faction in the struggle for national power following the assassination of Liberian President Samuel Doe in 1990. After some months, Emmanuel returned to the United States. Two years later, however, Emmanuel again visited Liberia; this time, he did not return. In 1997, Taylor was elected to the presidency. President Taylor soon charged the twenty-year-old Emmanuel with overseeing the state's creation of an Anti-Terrorism Unit (“ATU”)-also known in Liberia as the “Demon Forces”-which was responsible for protecting Taylor and his family.

Under Emmanuel's direction, the ATU began recruiting men to fill its ranks, and installed them at a former training camp known as Gbatala Base. The base was situated in a swampy area. As described by one recruit, Wesley Sieh, Emmanuel directed the ATU soldiers to dig around twenty grave-size prison pits, which were eventually covered with metal bars or barbed wire. A periodically overflowing river in the vicinity caused some of the pits to fill with water, which then stagnated. Aside from the prison pits, the base included a shooting range, a building containing a holding cell for disobedient ATU soldiers, and an “educational” training facility known as the College of Knowledge. The base was under the command of David Compari; he took orders from Emmanuel, who appeared several times a week wearing the ATU's green tiger-striped uniform and red emblem bearing a cobra and scorpion.

The ATU was Emmanuel's self-described “pet project.” At Gbatala and elsewhere, ATU affiliates referred to Emmanuel as “Chief,” and his license plate read “Demon.” Between 1999 and 2002, the defendant wielded his power in a terrifying and violent manner, torturing numerous individuals in his custody who were never charged with any crime or given any legal process. The following is an account of those acts, as described at length and in disturbing detail at Emmanuel's trial by his victims and others.

A. 1999 Torture of Sierra Leonean Refugees (Counts Three and Four)

In the late 1990s, Sierra Leoneans fled civil war in their country and crossed into Liberia, where they registered with the United Nations as refugees. Among them were Sulaiman Jusu and Momoh Turay, who had resettled in the northern Liberian town of Voinjama in 1998. On April 21, 1999, armed forces attacked Voinjama. Along with other refugees, Turay and Jusu fled towards Monrovia, Liberia, aboard trucks operated by the World Food Program. Yet, as is recounted in their extensive trial testimony, Turay and Jusu never reached Monrovia.

Their difficulties began when the refugee trucks were stopped at the St. Paul River Bridge Checkpoint, only about 150 kilometers by road to the southeast of Voinjama, and in the northern vicinity of the town of Gbarnga. ATU soldiers ordered the Sierra Leonean refugee passengers off the trucks and segregated them by gender. Turay and Jusu were in a group that also included Albert Williams, Foday Conteh, and Abdul Cole. ATU soldiers stripped Turay to his underwear, and then searched and interrogated all of the men. Meanwhile, the refugee truck on which Turay, Jusu, and the others had been traveling left the checkpoint without them.

Soon thereafter, the defendant Emmanuel arrived at the checkpoint, shouting and holding a pistol. He confronted the refugees and asked them if they were the rebels who had attacked Voinjama. When none of the detained refugees answered, Emmanuel killed three of them, including Williams, in front of the others; Emmanuel made the three men kneel before him and then shot each of them in the head while telling the other male refugees that they would be next. On Emmanuel's orders, soldiers dragged the bodies away; Jusu and Turay later saw two of the victims' severed heads displayed atop posts at the checkpoint.

The refugees, including Jusu, Turay, Conteh, and Cole, were then placed in a small cell at the checkpoint. When they were taken out, ATU soldiers beat them with their guns, bound them “tabie style”-their elbows tied so tightly behind their backs as to be touching-and blindfolded them. The refugees were then transferred by van to the Gbarnga Police Station while still bound and only in their underwear. The ATU soldiers continued to beat them during the journey, and Turay was beaten so badly that he defecated on himself. Within two days, Jusu, Turay, Conteh, and Cole were taken to Gbatala Base, about thirty-five kilometers to the southwest of Gbarnga.

At Gbatala, Emmanuel ordered ATU soldiers to put the four men into the prison pits. The pits were approximately two-and-a-half feet deep, covered with metal bars and barbed wire, lined with cement, and partially filled with water. Jusu's pit contained a rotting corpse and chin-high water; Turay's pit was filled with water and bones and was so small that it forced him to squat while his hands were tied to the bars covering the hole. ATU soldiers standing guard continually abused the prisoners, stabbing Jusu and Turay with guns, forcing Jusu to eat burning hot cassava stems that had been roasting in a fire, stepping on Turay's hands, which were tied above his head, and dripping molten plastic onto Turay's naked body. Turay testified that Emmanuel told the commander of Gbatala Base to “take care of” the prisoners if they did not tell the truth about their involvement with the Kamajors, a militia working in Sierra Leone to fight Taylor's regime.

On their second night in the Gbatala prison pits, Jusu and Cole escaped but were recaptured. ATU soldiers brought them back to the base after beating them with their guns. Emmanuel burned Turay with a cigarette, beat Jusu and Cole, and ultimately ordered that all the prisoners be taken from the pits. Once assembled, Emmanuel told the prisoners that no one escapes from Gbatala, and ordered his soldiers to kill Cole. When an ATU soldier reached for his gun, Emmanuel stopped him, and ordered that Cole be decapitated instead; with a bucket in place to collect the blood, the soldier then slowly sawed Cole's head off with a three-foot knife while Cole cried, screamed, and begged for his life....

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