The U.S. Code provides that a murder of a foreigner by an American citizen on the high seas is a federal criminal offense. The pertinent sections are 18 U.S.C. Section 1111 (Murder) and 18 U.S.C. Section 7 (Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction of the United States).
The U.S. Constitution provides that the president shall be removed from office on impeachment and conviction of “high crimes.” It goes without saying that murder is a “high crime.”
So, the question arises: Why shouldn’t President Trump be both criminally prosecuted and removed from office through impeachment for murdering those 11 Venezuelan citizens on the high seas? Indeed, why shouldn’t the military personnel who loyally followed his orders also be prosecuted and convicted of murder?
Trump claims that the 11 people were using a boat to transport drugs to the United States in violation of U.S. drug laws.
Even if Trump’s claim is valid though, he still has no legal authority to kill drug-war suspects, including both American citizens and foreign citizens. Deadly force can only be used in self-defense against the use of deadly force or the threat of deadly force. In other words, if a U.S. vessel had approached that Venezuela boat and those 11 people had begun firing guns at the U.S. vessel, the U.S. vessel could have responded with deadly force.
In essence, the same situation would apply here in the United States. Let’s assume that DEA agents suspect a vehicle of carrying illegal drugs. Let’s even assume that the agents have a judicially issued search warrant for the vehicle. Those agents are prohibited from simply opening fire on the vehicle and killing its occupants. If the agents do that, they will be indicted and convicted of murder. That’s because deadly force cannot be used against people who are simply suspected of being illegal drug dealers or illegal drug possessors. The DEA’s authority is limited to arresting, not killing, the suspects.
However, let’s assume that the occupants of the vehicle begin firing guns at the DEA agents. Now, the situation changes radically. The DEA agents now have the authority to use deadly force against the occupants of the vehicle.
There is no evidence whatsoever that those 11 people on that boat ever employed deadly force or threatened the use of deadly force against U.S. vessels. Certainly neither Trump nor any military officials have made that claim. In fact, the New York Times reports that the boat had actually turned around and was headed back to Venezuela when it was blown out of the water, on Trump’s order, by some type of military projectile. If so, then that is clearly the equivalent of shooting a drug-war suspect in the back — that is, when he is presenting no threat at all to law-enforcement personnel.
Trump claims to have information that the boat was carrying illegal drugs. Unfortunately, he has refused to provide that information, but even if he did, it would not exonerate him in a criminal prosecution for murder. That’s because, again, U.S. officials have no legal authority to initiate deadly force against a suspected drug-law violator, no matter how convinced they are that he is actually guilty.
Moreover, whatever Trump’s information is, it’s still entirely possible that that particular boat wasn’t carrying any illegal drugs after all, no matter how convincing Trump’s information was. For example, in every drug prosecution, federal prosecutors are required to present the sworn testimony of an official chemist who attests that he examined the substance in question and did in fact verify that it was an illegal substance. The law requires such testimony because the law recognizes that even though a person might think he’s carrying illegal drugs, it’s entirely possible that he isn’t.
Consider the following scenario: In the Charlie Kirk murder, Attorney General Kash Patel was initially convinced that one of the two men who were taken into custody was guilty of murdering Kirk. Patel stated, “The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.”
Suppose Trump had declared that initial suspect a political terrorist and ordered Patel and military officials to immediately kill him as a terrorist. Let’s assume that Patel and U.S. military personnel loyally obeyed Trump’s order, just as military personnel did with those 11 Venezuelan men.
After the real murderer was arrested, could Trump, Patel, and those military personnel avoid murder charges and a murder conviction by saying, “We were 100 percent convinced that the man we killed was guilty. We just made an innocent mistake.”
The answer is: No! That would not be a defense in a murder prosecution. Why? Because they had no legal authority to kill the suspect in any event. Under the law, they would have been required to accord him due process of law and a trial by jury where he could have the opportunity to establish his innocence. If he had been immediately killed, he obviously would have been prevented from doing that. That’s why we have trials here in the United States rather than extrajudicial killings. The same principle applies, of course, to those 11 Venezuelan men and to any drug-war suspect here inside the United States.
Does the fact that Trump used military personnel to carry out the killings of those 11 men alter the situation? No! The legal principles remain the same. Trump is simply using the military in a police capacity, something that foreign governments often do. The fact that it is soldiers, rather than DEA agents, enforcing U.S. drug laws doesn’t change the criminal nature of U.S. drug laws. In other words, simply because soldiers are being used in a police capacity doesn’t convert the “war on drugs” into a real war where soldiers are legally authorized to kill the enemy. Drug-law enforcement remains the same, whether it’s a soldier or a DEA agent doing the drug-war enforcement.
In an effort to justify his killing of those 11 men, Trump says that those 11 men were part of the Tren de Aragua gang in Venezuela, which Trump has designated a terrorist organization.
Does that change the situation for Trump and for the soldiers who carried out those drug-war killings? Actually, not. The fact that a drug-gang has been designated a terrorist organization does not provide Trump with the authority to carry out an extrajudicial killing of suspected members of the gang who are accused of violating U.S. drug laws.
Moreover, Venezuelan officials state that people who knew the dead men have attested that they weren’t members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Sure, it’s possible that Venezuelan officials are lying. But the problem is that, as we all know, U.S. officials lie too. That’s why we have trials — so that juries can decide who is lying and who isn’t. Of course, here there won’t be a trial because Trump chose to extrajudicially snuff out the lives of those people without according them a trial.
Are we really now living in a country where the president of the United States and his loyal military henchmen who promised to support and defend the Constitution can get away with murder? Apparently so.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
