When the FBI Comes Calling…®
PIRACY AT SEA
Piracy at sea is a crime with centuries, or even millennia, of history behind it. Timothy H. Goodman, Note: "Leaving the Corsair's Name to Other Times:" How to Enforce the Law of Sea Piracy in the 21st Century Through Regional International Agreements, 31 CASE W. RES. J. INT'L L. 139, 143 (1999).It existed in Ancient Greece and Rome—Julius Caesar was captured by pirates—through the middle ages, and perhaps reached the height of its romantic appeal in the mid-17th century. Id. at n.21 (citing E. KEBLE CHATTERTON, THE ROMANCE OF PIRACY (1915)).However, the phenomenon has not disappeared with the demise of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and other legendary figures. In fact, "the number of pirate attacks on ships has tripled in the past decade—putting piracy at its highest level in modern history. [Furthermore,] today's pirates are often trained fighters aboard speedboats equipped with satellite phones and global positioning systems and armed with automatic weapons, antitank missiles, and grenades." Gal Luft and Anne Korin, Terrorism Goes to Sea, FOREIGN AFF. Nov.-Dec. 2004, at 61. While piracy of intellectual property has supplanted piracy at sea in the modern lexicon, it continues to exist. Piracy at sea is rarely prosecuted and it remains to be seen whether efforts to bring attention to the activities of modern-day pirates will change that. What follows is a summary of provisions in the United States Code which address the crime of piracy, with relevant case law when appropriate.
18 U.S.C. § 1651 (2005).
Piracy under law of nations
The Crime
Under section 1651, it is a crime for a person, "on the high seas" to
- commit the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations.18 U.S.C. § 1651.
This statute applies only to a person who
- is on the "high seas" and
- afterwards brought into or found in the United States.
The Punishment
The punishment for violating section 1651 is
- imprisonment for life.18 U.S.C. § 1651
Case Law Interpreting Section 1651
Like a number of other statutes, there is very little modern case law interpreting the current statute, therefore it will be necessary to use cases that interpret the predecessors to section 1651.
High Seas Defined
There is some controversy about what exactly constitutes "high seas." In 1881, the Supreme Court of the United States described the high seas as "where the law of no particular State has exclusive force, but all are equal." The Scotland, 105 U.S. 24, 29 (1881). In the early 1900s, Justice Holmes defined the high seas as "outside the territory, in a place belonging to no other sovereign," The Hamilton, 207 U.S. 398, 403 (1907) and as a region "subject to no sovereign." American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U.S. 347, 355 (1909). And this concept of "high seas" as international waters and beyond the territorial limits of the United States continued into the 1920s, see Cunard S.S. Co. v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 100, 122-23 (1923); Maul v. United States, 274 U.S. 501, 511 (1927). However, an argument could be made that "high seas" refers to those waters "as those seas beyond the low-water mark." In re Air Crash Off Long Island, 209 F.3d 200, 206 (2d Cir. 2000). Justice Story, in 1829, "characterized the high seas as 'the open, uninclosed ocean, or that portion of the sea, which is without the fauces terrae on the sea coast.'" Id. at 206-07 (citing United States v. Grush, 26 F. Cas. 48, 51 (D. Mass. 1829) (No. 15,268)).(Fauces terrae literally means "jaws of the land," which are "narrow headlands and promontories, inclosing a portion or arm of the sea within them." Id. n.11 (citing Black's Law Dictionary 738 (4th ed. 1951)).) This is apparently a definition shared by other courts. See The Manila Prize Cases, 188 U.S. 254, 271 (1903); United States v. Rodgers, 150 U.S. 249, 253-55 (1893); United States v. Ross, 27 F. Cas. 899, 900 (D.R.I. 1813) (No. 16,196). As can be seen, what exactly constitutes the high seas is a matter of some disagreement, but it seems that modern courts are using the definition that means international waters and not merely waters beyond the low-water mark.