Posted on: Thursday, April 11, 2002

Federal judge allows detention of crew

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the U.S. government has the authority to hold 29 men from China as witnesses because they were aboard a Taiwanese fishing vessel the day its captain and first mate were fatally stabbed.

But U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor stopped short of ruling that the United States has jurisdiction in the case brought against Lei Shi, who is accused of killing the two men March 14 aboard the Full Means No. 2 in international waters southeast of the Big Island.

Federal officials say Shi, a cook aboard the vessel, stabbed the two men after they rejected his demands that the boat set a return course for China. Shi, 21, has pleaded innocent.

At a hearing before Gillmor, Alan Warner, an attorney for crewman Yan Long Xiong, said the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals, which oversees cases in Hawai'i and a number of Western states, has consistently ruled that there has to be "nexus" or rational connection between international incidents and the ability to try suspects of criminal wrongdoing in U.S. courts.

Simply put, the U.S. government, which is prosecuting the case against Shi, has to show an adverse effect on U.S. interests before it can assert jurisdiction, Warner said.

Since a Taiwan citizen was killed, as was a citizen from the People's Republic of China, either of those two countries might have a right to claim jurisdiction, he said, and "the U.S. courts just have to wash their hands of it."

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Brady, who is handling the case against Shi, told Gillmor that a law adopted by Congress in March 1995 requires the United States to prosecute in cases such as Shi's "simply because the (alleged) offender is present in U.S. jurisdiction."

Brady said that after the stabbings, the acting master of the Full Means No. 2 and a crewman jumped into the ocean and swam to an approaching U.S. Coast Guard cutter "to get word to the U.S. that they needed assistance."

"They were asking for the U.S. to intervene," Brady said.

In addition, China, Taiwan and the United States all signed an international "convention" aimed at thwarting illegal acts aboard ships on the high seas, which strengthens the U.S. claim of jurisdiction, Brady said.

Gillmor told Brady and Pamela Byrne, Shi's lawyer, that she wants the Chinese crew members who have been detained as witnesses to be released as soon as they are questioned.

Byrne said videotaped depositions will begin today at the federal detention center where the crewmen are held. Six interviews are scheduled for today.