United States v. Dávila-Reyes
| Decision Date | 20 January 2022 |
| Docket Number | No. 16-2089, No. 16-2143,16-2089 |
| Citation | 23 F.4th 153 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Jeffri DÁVILA-REYES, Defendant, Appellant. United States of America, Appellee, v. José D. Reyes-Valdivia, Defendant, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Franco L. Pérez-Redondo, Research and Writing Specialist, with whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal Public Defender, Vivianne M. Marrero, Assistant Federal Public Defender, and Liza L. Rosado-Rodríguez, Research and Writing Specialist, were on brief, for appellant José D. Reyes-Valdivia.
Raymond L. Sánchez-Maceira on brief for appellant Jeffri Dávila-Reyes.
Thomas F. Klumper, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, United States Attorney, Mariana E. Bauzá-Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney, Chief, Appellate Division, John A. Mathews II, Assistant United States Attorney, and David C. Bornstein, Assistant United States Attorney, were on brief, for appellee.
Before Howard, Chief Judge, Lipez and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
These consolidated appeals arise from the U.S. Coast Guard's interdiction of a small speed boat in the western Caribbean Sea and the subsequent arrest and indictment of the three men on board for drug trafficking under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act ("MDLEA"), 46 U.S.C. §§ 70501 -08. In a motion to dismiss the indictment, appellants José Reyes-Valdivia and Jeffri Dávila-Reyes challenged the constitutionality of the MDLEA in multiple respects. Most relevant here, they argued that the statute, which in certain circumstances allows U.S. law enforcement to arrest and prosecute foreign nationals for drug crimes committed in international waters, exceeds Congress's authority under Article I of the Constitution. The district court denied the motion to dismiss. Both appellants then pleaded guilty pursuant to plea agreements in which each waived his right to appeal if sentenced in accordance with his agreement's sentencing recommendation provision.
On appeal, appellants renew their constitutional objections to their prosecution. In our original decision, we did not reach appellants' "primary argument" -- that their prosecution was unlawful because their vessel was not properly deemed stateless -- on the ground that "our governing precedent concerning the protective principle of international law ... permit[ted] prosecution under the MDLEA even of foreigners on foreign vessels." United States v. Dávila-Reyes, 937 F.3d 57, 59 (1st Cir. 2019) (withdrawn).1 That precedent, we concluded, required that we affirm appellants' convictions.
Appellants then petitioned for panel rehearing and en banc review. We held their requests in abeyance pending the en banc decision in another drug-trafficking case involving a constitutional challenge to the MDLEA. See United States v. Aybar-Ulloa, 987 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2021) (en banc). Subsequently, based on our view that the decision in Aybar-Ulloa "diminished the force of this circuit's precedent on the protective principle," we concluded that it would no longer be appropriate to rely on that principle to uphold appellants' convictions. Order, Nos. 16-2089, 2143 (Mar. 17, 2021). We therefore granted panel rehearing to address appellants' constitutional challenge to their prosecution under the MDLEA.
We now hold that Congress exceeded its authority under Article I of the Constitution in enacting § 70502(d)(1)(C) of the MDLEA. That provision expands the definition of a "vessel without nationality" beyond the bounds of international law and thus unconstitutionally extends U.S. jurisdiction to foreigners on foreign vessels. Hence, appellants' convictions must be vacated.
We draw the following facts primarily from appellants' change of plea colloquies and the uncontested portions of their Presentence Investigation Reports. See United States v. Vélez-Luciano, 814 F.3d 553, 556 (1st Cir. 2016).2 In October 2015, while patrolling waters approximately 30 nautical miles southeast of San Andrés Island, Colombia,3 U.S. Coast Guard officers observed a small vessel4 moving at a high rate of speed. When the occupants of the vessel became aware of the Coast Guard boat nearby, they began throwing packages and fuel barrels overboard. The Coast Guard officers approached the boat and began to question its occupants, the two appellants and a third co-defendant. Reyes-Valdivia, as the "master"5 of the vessel, claimed Costa Rican nationality for the vessel but did not provide any documentation to support that claim.6
The Coast Guard officers boarded and searched the vessel pursuant to a provision of an agreement between the United States and Costa Rica "Concerning Cooperation to Suppress Illicit Traffic." See Reyes-Valdivia, ECF No. 46-2, at 1 (Mar. 25, 2016) (Dep't of State Certification). The officers did not find any contraband, but a chemical test detected traces of cocaine. Based on that evidence, the Coast Guard detained the three men -- all citizens of Costa Rica -- and took them to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and then eventually to Puerto Rico. At some point, the United States contacted the government of Costa Rica requesting confirmation of the vessel's registry or nationality, and Costa Rica subsequently responded that it could not confirm the vessel's registry. The United States thus determined that, pursuant to § 70502(d)(1)(C) of the MDLEA, the boat was "without nationality" and subject to U.S. jurisdiction.7
All three defendants were charged with two counts of trafficking cocaine in violation of the MDLEA. Reyes-Valdivia and Dávila-Reyes moved to dismiss the indictment for lack of jurisdiction,8 arguing that the MDLEA, particularly § 70502(d)(1)(C), is unconstitutional. In their view, § 70502(d)(1)(C) exceeds Congress's authority under Article I of the Constitution, and it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment because it is unconstitutionally vague, subject to arbitrary enforcement, and criminalizes conduct that has no nexus with the United States. The district court denied the motion.
Reyes-Valdivia and Dávila-Reyes both subsequently agreed to plead guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine in violation of the MDLEA. See 46 U.S.C. § 70503(a)(1).9 Both men agreed to waive appellate review if sentenced in accordance with the sentencing recommendation provisions in their plea agreements. Ultimately, the district court sentenced Dávila-Reyes consistently with his agreement (a 120-month term), but sentenced Reyes-Valdivia to a term longer than proposed in his agreement (70 months instead of 57) because it found that he should be given a two-level enhancement for being the "captain" of the vessel. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(3)(C).
Reyes-Valdivia's motion for reconsideration was denied. Both Reyes-Valdivia and Dávila-Reyes then appealed. We affirmed their convictions on the basis that the protective principle permitted their prosecution.
As noted, this court's en banc decision in United States v. Aybar-Ulloa led us to withdraw our prior opinion and reconsider appellants' claims. In Aybar-Ulloa, the en banc court held that "international law accepts the criminal prosecution by the United States of persons ... who [are] seized by the United States while trafficking cocaine on a stateless vessel on the high seas." 987 F.3d at 3.10 In so holding, the court bypassed our circuit's precedent on the protective principle, which could have provided a straightforward basis for affirming the conviction, and instead addressed a more complex issue of international law. Notably, the en banc court did not achieve unanimity on the legal basis for U.S. jurisdiction over foreign nationals apprehended on vessels conceded to be stateless. See infra. The choice of a non-unanimous analytical path over reliance on the protective principle is one basis for our conclusion that Aybar-Ulloa weakened our circuit's protective principle jurisprudence.
In addition, statements in both the majority and concurring opinions in Aybar-Ulloa more directly suggest skepticism about applying the protective principle to a foreign vessel whose occupants are foreign nationals allegedly involved in drug trafficking, at least absent acquiescence by the flag nation. The majority observed that one of our primary precedents on the protective principle -- United States v. Cardales, 168 F.3d 548 (1st Cir. 1999) -- "can be read as applying only to the circumstance where a foreign flag nation consents to the application of United States law to persons found on that nation's flagged vessel." Aybar-Ulloa, 987 F.3d at 3. In our prior opinion in this case, we assumed that appellants' vessel was Costa Rican, as they had asserted, but we concluded that our precedent nonetheless required us to uphold their prosecution based on the protective principle. The Aybar-Ulloa majority's posited reading of Cardales, however, would foreclose reliance on the protective principle here because the record contains no consent from the Costa Rican government to the prosecution.
The Aybar-Ulloa concurring opinion aired an even broader uncertainty about the protective principle. In describing Aybar-Ulloa's contentions, the concurrence noted the long-ago observation by then-Judge Breyer that there is a " ‘forceful argument’ against application of [the] protective principle to encompass drug trafficking on the high seas." Id. at 15 (Barron, J., concurring) (quoting United States v. Robinson, 843 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 1988) (Breyer, J.)); see also id. at 20 (). Both Aybar-Ulloa opinions, then, caused the panel to doubt its reliance on the protective principle to uphold Reyes-Valdivia and Dávila-Reyes's prosecution under the MDLEA. See also Aaron J. Casavant, In Defense of the U.S. Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act: A Justification for the Law's Extraterritorial Reach, 8...
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