MIAMI, FL – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has upheld the convictions of three men caught transporting cocaine on a stateless vessel in the Caribbean, rejecting their constitutional challenges to the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act and arguments over jurisdiction.
The defendants, Santo Rosario-Rivera, Francisco Rijo-Rijo (also known as David Ernand), and Placido Rivera-Rodriguez, were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2022 while aboard a vessel located approximately 130 nautical miles off the coast of Aruba. The vessel displayed no indicia of nationality, and none of the men identified a master or made a nationality claim for the vessel, rendering it stateless under 46 U.S.C. § 70502(d)(1)(B). The Coast Guard recovered 18 bales of cocaine during the search.
All three men were indicted in the Southern District of Florida under 46 U.S.C. §§ 70503(a)(1), 70506(a), and 70506(b), as well as 21 U.S.C. § 960(b)(1)(B) and 18 U.S.C. § 2, for conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine on the high seas. They later pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 57 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release.
In their consolidated appeals—Eleventh Circuit case numbers 23-12779, 23-12828, and 23-12842—the defendants argued that their arrest in Aruba’s exclusive economic zone placed them outside the bounds of the “high seas” as defined by customary international law, and therefore beyond Congress’s constitutional reach under the Felonies Clause. They also asserted violations of due process and claimed the government failed to prove subject-matter jurisdiction under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act.
The Eleventh Circuit rejected those arguments, citing established precedent. The court reaffirmed that a nation’s exclusive economic zone qualifies as part of the “high seas” for the purposes of the Act and that Congress has authority under the Felonies Clause to prosecute drug trafficking on stateless vessels regardless of any nexus to the United States. It also found that the government had met its burden to establish jurisdiction based on the Coast Guard’s standard procedures and the smugglers’ admission that they made no claim of nationality.
The appeals arose from U.S. District Court case number 1:22-cr-20572-FAM in the Southern District of Florida.
