Trust the Law

The Trust Issue:

There is a basic failure of trust in the American court system among many of us, including me. Not for no reason! (H/t: Southern Appeal).

The originally named defendants were 70,787 pounds of spiny lobster tails. Less than 5 percent of them were, horror of horrors, too short – which may or may not have been a violation of Honduran sea-harvest laws.

Even worse, the dastardly tails entered Bayou La Batre, Ala., not in the required cardboard containers, but in plastic. Again, Honduran law may have been violated.

U.S. prosecutors, perceiving a dangerous conspiracy, stopped bothering the lobsters and threw their net at the lobster importers. Using something called the Lacey Act, which makes it illegal in the United States to import goods in contravention of another nation’s laws, the prosecutors began building their case.

And if it were an illegal import, well, that made it “smuggling,” right? And if the importers used the money they earned to buy any goods in the United States, well, that turned the case into “money laundering.”

Suddenly, the allegation of minor civil violations became a major criminal case. Three defendants were given sentences of – get this! – eight years each. In federal prison. To enforce a foreign regulation. About undersized lobsters.

Never mind that the importers openly took the lobsters through Customs, seemingly unaware they were doing anything wrong. Never mind that the U.S. Department of Commerce published an official price list for Honduran lobsters of the very sizes supposedly outlawed.

Never mind that one of the importers was a Honduran businessman, David Henson McNab, who willingly returned repeatedly to the United States to defend himself, apparently thinking it was all a misunderstanding.

And never mind that from the very start, there was conflicting, expert testimony about whether Honduran law was violated at all. The original trial judge, citing a midlevel Honduran official, allowed the trial to continue, all the way to convictions.

Later, when the attorney general of Honduras (!) wrote to say the regulations at issue had been repealed four years before this case began, the appeals court said it was too late.

“There must be some finality with representations of foreign law by foreign governments,” wrote the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

So: Prison! Even though no existing law had been violated.

Meanwhile, apparently we can't keep people in prison who've actually tried to kill us.

How are we meant to allow ourselves to be governed by courts that behave in this way? The same way we are governed by Congress, I suppose.

UPDATE: I was flip in my dismissal of the SCOTUS case, not wishing to add to what Cassandra had already said about it. It doesn't really say we "can't keep people in prison," but just that we must apply Habeas rights to them as if they were (a) citizens and (b) not unlawful combatants captured in a foreign war zone and never on US soil.

That's madness, in my opinion; but I've disagreed with the whole line of SCOTUS cases here. My reading is that we should be applying the Geneva Conventions as ratified, which offer very few rights to unlawful combatants of nonsignatory nations. They have a right to a hearing on their status, and if they are found to be unlawful combatants, not much else.

The SCOTUS has consistently been expanding their rights and access to the courts, which strikes me as a terrible mistake.

The overlap between this case and the lobster case is that both of them have to do with a blurring of the line between US and foreign law. The US courts here are undertaking to enforce Honduran law -- which they understand imperfectly at best, and whether or not the regulations were actually in force at the time. They are going hog wild looking for ways to make crimes out of ordinary behavior.

The SCOTUS case is a case where people are being treated as if American citizens' rights applied to everyone, everywhere. This is not so, has never been so, and really ought not to be so. American citizenship carries with it rights but also duties, and a debt to the nation that supports those rights. If you want those rights, you should take the lawful steps necessary to apply for immigration.

You shouldn't get them for waging war against us. If you do so honorably, you are entitled to POW protections under the Geneva Conventions. If you do so dishonorably, you are not even entitled to that.

Except, now, you are.