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Limiting the Extraterritorial Reach of U.S. Criminal Law
The Eleventh Circuit recently vacated two defendants' money-laundering sentences because it found that they had “committed no crime against the United States.” United States v. Lopez-Vanegas, 493 F.3d 1305, 1306 (11th Cir. 2007). This decision was shocking because the defendants and their co-conspirators met in Miami numerous times to plan their conspiracy. At first blush, the court's decision seems to pose a significant obstacle to the increasingly broad extraterritorial application of U.S. criminal laws by the Department of Justice (DOJ). But when applied to conspiracies based on U.S. money laundering laws, does Lopez-Vanegas go far enough to prevent the DOJ from charging foreign nationals for conduct outside the U.S.?
The Lopez-Vanegas Case
Ivan Lopez-Vanegas and his co-defendant were allegedly part of a conspiracy to transport cocaine from Venezuela to Paris through Saudi Arabia using the private plane of a Saudi Arabian prince. The pair were convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine in violation of 21 U.S.C. ” 841 and 846. The drugs were distributed throughout Europe, but the scheme was planned and coordinated in Miami. Although neither statute expressly requires that the cocaine underlying the conspiracy have any connection with the United States, the Eleventh Circuit found that a conspiracy conviction could not be based on possession of cocaine entirely outside of the country. Such statutes, being silent about their territorial reach, must be presumed to apply only domestically unless Congress intended extraterritoriality and the laws' nature permits it.
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