Chinese sailor admits slayings
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
A former cook aboard a Taiwan-owned fishing ship is facing 25 to 30 years behind bars after admitting in federal court yesterday that he fatally stabbed the captain and first mate before taking control of the ship in March 2002.
Lei Shi, from the People's Republic of China, told U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor that the captain had beaten him on the head with closed fists to the point of exhaustion approximately two hours before Shi returned to the bridge with a knife.
SHI
He acknowledged stabbing to death the captain, from Taiwan, and the first mate, from the People's Republic of China.
The violence occurred on the high seas, southeast of the Big Island, and became an international incident after the U.S. Coast Guard responded to a distress call from the ship's owner in Taiwan, who had lost contact with the vessel.
A Coast Guard contingent approaching the Full Means No. 2 was given a written message from the remaining crew members aboard the ship, saying the captain and first mate had been killed and asking for assistance.
According to statements made during pretrial hearings, Shi and several other crew members had been recruited from rural areas of China, had given money to middlemen to obtain jobs on the fishing ship and had been at sea for more than a year without touching shore or having their families receive the wages promised to the men.
Shi claimed that the captain became irate and beat him for asking to be put off the ship and allowed to return to China.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft last year decided not to seek the death penalty against Shi, now 23.
In the hearing yesterday, Shi apologized for killing the two ship's officers.
Under the terms of a plea agreement, Shi would receive a prison term of between 292 and 365 months when he is sentenced on May 20 by Gillmor.
Pamela Byrne, the federal deputy public defender who represented Shi, said Shi retained the option of withdrawing his guilty plea if Gillmor does not agree to the prison term called for in the plea agreement.
Byrne said Shi had been scheduled to go to trial Feb. 10 and learned only recently that even if a jury found him not guilty, federal officials planned to deport him immediately either to Taiwan or to China.
"Whichever country got him or asked for him first, it would almost certainly have meant an execution for him," Byrne said.
Byrne sought to have critical evidence against Shi thrown out, including a statement Shi made to Coast Guard officials who boarded the ship and whom he told that he was being kept in a storeroom with the door welded shut because he had killed the captain.
Byrne also challenged the United State's jurisdiction in the matter, saying that the ship was a foreign-flagged vessel, with an all-foreign crew, and that the stabbings took place in international waters.
But Gillmor denied both defense requests.
