Volume 70, Number 1 (2017) Winter 2017

Caption

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Kiska (WPB 1336) in waters off Hawaii. In March 2002, Coast Guard officers from Kiska and FBI agents took PRC national Shi Lei off the Seychelles-registered, Taiwan-owned fishing vessel Full Means II in international waters and arrested him for murder. Shi was tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison in the United States.

This remains the only instance of U.S. assertion of jurisdiction and prosecution under the implementing legislation for the 1988 SUA Convention, subsequently updated. In “Effective Implementation of the 2005 Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation,” James Kraska explains that many states have not acceded to the 2005 treaty, and most of those that have done so have not taken the steps required to implement it effectively, even though the need to do so is perhaps even greater today.