Rojas Drug Trial: Update

A Colombian peasant who became the chief financial officer of a powerful squadron of the leftist FARC guerrillas was convicted Tuesday by a federal jury on charges of conspiring to send several tons of cocaine to the United States.^[1]

Nayibe Rojas is the first high-ranking member of the “narco-terrorism” group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, convicted of drug running by a U.S. federal court.^[2] The jury heard hours of taped phone conversations, testimonies by U.S. and Colombian law enforcement agents, and alleged former drug traffickers; it issued the guilty verdict after deliberating for four days.^[3]

The Bush administration estimates that 80 to 90 percent of the cocaine on U.S. streets is Colombian. FARC controls 70 percent of the U.S. bound cocaine market; it is used to finance its insurgency.^[4] ''This case sends a message to major overseas drug trafficking organizations: We will investigate, prosecute and punish all those who manufacture and distribute illegal drugs for export to the United States,'' Deputy Attorney General Paul said in a statement.^[5] “There is no international safe haven for illegal narcotics traffickers.”^[6]
In that assertion he is correct, prescriptive jurisdiction of the U.S. is so extremely broad, that there literally may not be a safe haven for criminals if the U.S. decides to go after them. The district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States.^[7] Jurisdiction will be found only when the criminal act occurs within United States territory, although more frequently there are exceptions found to this rule.^[8]. However, the criminal jurisdiction of the United States may in some circumstances extend to its citizens everywhere.^[9] Generally, if the United States wants to punish its own citizens for any reason, Congress must clearly designate the extraterritorial nature of the act it is punishing.^[10]

Thus, the language that Congress uses to define the jurisdiction of the crime in the statute will determine the outcome. Sometimes it will say "in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce,"^[11] or "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,”^[12] or sometimes it simply says both.^[13] In Rojas’ case she fell into the U.S. jurisdiction by trafficking drugs into the U.S. we have previously discussed this case here.

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^[1] Pablo Bachelet, Jury Convicts FARC Leader, Miami Herald, February 21, 2007.
^[2] Id.
^[3] Id.
^[4] Id.
^[5] Id.
^[6] Id.
^[7] 18 U.S.C. § 3231 (2005)
^[8] Id., see also United States v. Luton, 486 F.2d 1021, 1022 (5th Cir. 1973)
^[9] Id, see also United States v. Smiley, 27 F. Cas. 1132, 1134 (C.C.N.D. Cal. 1864) (No. 16,317).
^[10] Id.
^[11] See, 18 U.S.C. §§ 922, 1962, 2251 (2006).
[12] See 18 U.S.C. §§ 81, 114 (2006)
[13] 18 U.S.C. § 1591.