Fourth Circuit Holds Piracy Means an Attack, not Just Seizing a Vessel

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, VA, upheld the first piracy convictions in a U.S. Court in nearly 200 years. In U.S. v. Abdi Wali Dire, the Court rejected the arguments by convicted Somali pirates that their life sentences should be overturned because their unsuccessful attack on a U.S. warship did not constitute piracy under the law.

Attached here is a press release about the decision from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The cases arise from the April 1, 2010 attack by a group of Somali Pirates on the USS Nicholas in the Indian Ocean.

The legal issue before the Court was whether the Somalis' failed attack on the USS Nicholas constituted piracy under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1651, which states:

Whoever, on the high seas commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of
nations, and is afterward brought into or found in the Unites States, shall
be imprisoned for life.

Under cases dating from the original enactment of sec. 1651's predecessor in 1819, piracy had been defined as "robbery upon the sea." United States v. Smith, 18 U.S. (5 Wheat.) 153 (1820). Reasoning that piracy was defined by statute under the "law of nations" the Court looked to two international agreements, the Geneva Convention on the High Seas (1958, ratified by U.S. in 1961), and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS - 1982), which has not been ratified by the U.S. Both conventions define piracy to include "illegal acts of violence."

Ultimately, the Court found that the 1819 definition of piracy, requiring an act of robbery, was inconsistent with the evolution of the law of nations as to piracy since 1819, and that even in 1819, violent acts themselves were considered piracy.

The opinion, by Judge King (of W.Va. I might add) offers an interesting, and detailed history of the treatment of piracy in the U.S., and the international evolution of its prosecution.