The defendant was aboard a Honduran-flagged fishing vessel and intercepted by the United States Coast Guard (USCG) in international waters approximately 90 nautical miles off the coast of Colombia. The USCG boarded the ship, discovered cocaine and arrested the defendant. The defendant was charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine in violation of the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA). The defendant filed a motion to dismiss on the ground that the MDLEA was unconstitutional as applied to him because he was arrested in Colombia's territorial waters. The defendant argued that customary international law, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS), recognised a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for coastal states and therefore Colombia's sovereignty extended for 200 nautical miles from its coast.

Held: Motion denied.

UNCLOS recognises that every State has the right to establish the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles. Thus, within the territorial sea, a State possesses complete sovereignty. Although the EEZ refers to 200 nautical miles of water from the baseline of a coastal State, it does not mean that States enjoy sovereignty for 200 miles from their coast. Instead, States enjoy specific economic rights, rather than sovereignty, with respect to the continental shelf and EEZ. Thus, crimes committed in the EEZ are treated as occurring on the high seas. Accordingly, the defendant’s motion was denied because he was arrested on the high seas, not in Colombia's territorial waters.