After hostage
takers who abducted U.S. citizen in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago where
extradited to U.S., District of Columbia Circuit ponders whether Hostage Taking
Act applies in cases where the alleged victim obtained U.S. immigration status
or citizenship by fraud
Defendants
Wayne Pierre, Ricardo De Four, Zion Clarke, Kevon Demerieux, Kevin Nixon,
Christopher Sealey, and Anderson Straker, nationals of the Republic of Trinidad
and Tobago, throughout the years abducted wealthy individuals, held them
captive, and extorted ransoms from their family and friends.
On
April 6, 2005, they abducted a Trinidad-native and a United States citizen,
Balram Maharaj, who visited his children in Trinidad. The defendants delivered
Maharaj to an isolated camp deep within the forest where they tied him to a
post and gave him little food and water. Maharaj suffered from severe diabetes,
hypertension and tuberculosis. The defendants ignored his pleas for medication
and used his worsening health as leverage to demand three million Trinidadian
dollars from his family. After six days in captivity, missing the medication,
Maharaj slipped into a diabetic coma and died. Defendants dismembered his body,
packed the remains in Styrofoam containers and buried them in the woods.
In
late 2005, assisted by FBI, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service uncovered
evidence of Maharaj’s death. The United States sought the extradition of the
defendants and charged them with conspiracy and hostage-taking resulting in
death in violation of The Hostage Taking Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1203. As the United
States immigration status or citizenship is an essential element of a Hostage
Taking Act prosecution, defendants argued that Maharaj secured his immigration
status or citizenship through fraud. He had allegedly failed to disclose an
assault on his wife in his U.S. immigration applications. The district court
denied this argument. The jury convicted defendants of all charges, and the
district court sentenced them to life imprisonment without the possibility of
release. Defendants appealed.
The
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirms
defendants’ convictions and the judgment of the district court.
The
issue here is whether The Hostage Taking Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1203, that prescribes
criminal penalties for foreign nationals who abduct American citizens, applies
if after the crime was committed the victim’s immigration status or citizenship
is found invalid.
The
Hostage Taking Act was enacted to fulfill the United States’ obligations under
the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. Section 18 U.S.C.
§ 1203, and makes extraterritorial hostage-taking a criminal offense when the
victim is a United States national.
Before
the trial defendants uncovered evidence they claimed demonstrated that Maharaj
obtained his naturalization through fraud, by misrepresenting facts on his
green card application, and later on his naturalization application. The
defendants thus argued that because conviction under the Hostage Taking Act
requires U.S. immigration status or citizenship and because Maharaj’s fraud
negated his immigration status or citizenship, the district court lacked
jurisdiction.
“The
district court disagreed. Citing a long and unbroken line of Supreme Court
precedent, see, e.g., United States v. Zucca, 351 U.S. 91, 95 & n.8 (1956);
see also Bindczyck v. Finucane, 342 U.S. 76, 83 (1951), the district court held
that 8 U.S.C. § 1451, which permits the United States Attorney to institute
denaturalization proceedings in a federal district court, is the exclusive
procedure for voiding the immigration status or citizenship of a person
naturalized due to fraud. United States v. Clarke, 628 F. Supp. 2d 1, 9 (D.D.C.
2009). Immigration status or citizenship, the court held, remains valid until a
district court, acting upon a United States Attorney’s section 1451 motion,
determines that naturalization was ‘procured by concealment of a material fact
or fraud.’ Id. at 6 (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)). Given that no district court
had ever made such a finding as to Maharaj, the court denied the motion.
Clarke, 628 F. Supp. 2d at 10.”
“The
district court also granted the government’s motion in limine to exclude from
trial any evidence regarding Maharaj’s alleged fraud. Id. at 13. Conviction
under the Hostage Taking Act, the court held, requires the government to prove
that the victim acquired immigration status or citizenship by birth or
naturalization. Id. at 13. Evidence disputing whether the victim should have
been naturalized or the circumstances surrounding naturalization is irrelevant.
Id. The court therefore rejected defendants’ argument that they had a Sixth
Amendment right to present evidence regarding Maharaj’s alleged fraud to the
jury. Id. at 14. ‘[T]he jury,’ the district court concluded, ‘may not decide
the validity of Maharaj’s immigration status or citizenship.’ Id. at 13.”
Furthermore,
defendants argued that “[a] claim that an element of the offense is
unsatisfied—that the victim was not a United States citizen, for example—goes
only to a defendant’s guilt or innocence. In other words, jurisdiction hinges
not on the merits, but rather on the court’s constitutional or statutory power
to adjudicate the case. Lamar v. United States, 240 U.S. 60, 64 (1916) (‘Jurisdiction
is a matter of power, and covers wrong as well as right decisions.’). Under 18
U.S.C. § 3231, federal district courts possess statutory authority over ‘all
offenses against the laws of the United States.’ Because violation of the
Hostage Taking Act is an offense against the laws of the United States, our
jurisdictional inquiry ends and we turn to the merits of defendants’ appeal.
United States v. Fahnbulleh, 752 F.3d 470, 476 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (‘If an
indictment or information alleges the violation of a crime set out in Title 18
or in one of the other statutes defining federal crimes, that is the end of the
jurisdictional inquiry.’) (internal quotation marks omitted).”
“[…]
[T]he Hostage Taking Act. Section 1203(b)(1)(A) criminalizes hostage-taking that
occurs outside the United States if ‘the person seized or detained is a
national of the United States.’ A ‘national of the United States’ is, in turn,
defined by reference to the Immigration and Nationality Act as ‘a citizen of
the United States.’ 18 U.S.C. § 1203(c); 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(22). By its plain
language, then, section 1203 broadly protects United States citizens. The
statute imposes no restriction on this protection. It does not, for example,
exclude citizens who, in retrospect, are unworthy of the honor. Nor does it
exclude persons whose immigration status or citizenship might at some later
time be invalidated. In other words, section 1203 protects victims according to
their status at the time of the hostage-taking.”
“True,
section 1203 is written in the present tense—the statute applies if ‘the person
seized or detained is a national of the United States.’ But that clause appears
in a criminal statute that requires examination of past events—whether the
victim was seized or detained. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398
(2011) (use of backward-looking language such as ‘resulted in’ and ‘involved’
in federal habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), requires examination of the
state-court decision at the time it was made). […]Determining whether an
American citizen was seized or detained under the Hostage Taking Act requires
examination of the victim’s status at the time of the abduction.”
The
Court concludes that “Congress has vested sole naturalization authority in the
Attorney General, 8 U.S.C. § 1421(a), and a certificate of naturalization
represents conclusive evidence of the Attorney General’s determination, Tutun
v. United States, 270 U.S. 568, 577 (1926); 8 U.S.C. § 1443(e). […] [W]hether
the Attorney General, acting through INS, should have issued a certificate to
Maharaj—as opposed to whether the certificate was itself authentic—is
irrelevant under the Hostage Taking Act”, and affirms district court’s
decision.
Citation: U.S. v. Straker,
800 F.3d 570 (D.C. Cir. 2015).
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