The Ship Beyond The Limit

A foreign-registered ship loaded with liquor from a Canadian port lay off the coast of a western state. Prosecutors alleged that its captain and officers, with confederates ashore, ran a smuggling operation: small motorboats came out, took on liquor and ferried it to a creek on the mainland, while the shore men directed the transfers and supplied fuel. A coast guard cutter seized the ship on the high seas about 5.7 nautical miles from nearby offshore islands, under a treaty with the ship's home country allowing seizures of smuggling vessels beyond territorial waters, and brought ship, cargo and crew into port. The defence argued that the seizure was outside the treaty zone, that men seized outside the country could not be tried for a conspiracy carried out inside it, and that illegally seized defendants were beyond the court's jurisdiction.