UNITED STATES v. SUAREZ (2019)

SUMMARY ORDER

Gerson Palagio Suarez appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Sullivan, J.), convicting him, after a plea of guilty, of two counts of violating the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (“MDLEA”), 46 U.S.C. § 70501 et seq.: (i) manufacturing and distributing, and possessing with intent to manufacture and distribute, five kilograms and more of mixtures and substances containing a detectable amount of cocaine, while aboard a vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and (ii) conspiracy to do the same. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal.

All issues here on appeal were resolved by precedential opinion in United States v. Van Der End, 943 F.3d 98 (2d Cir. 2019), in which we affirmed the district court’s judgment as to Suarez’s codefendant, Stefan Van Der End, who raised identical arguments on appeal. In Van Der End, we held that by pleading guilty, the defendant waived his right to raise a Confrontation Clause challenge to the government’s evidence that the vessel upon which he and Suarez traveled was stateless and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Id. at 103–04, at *3. Relatedly, we held that the defendant, by pleading guilty, had waived his claim that the district court should have submitted the question of whether the vessel was subject to the United States’ jurisdiction to the jury. Id. at 103–05, at *3-4. Because Suarez pled guilty, he has likewise waived these rights.

In Van Der End, we held that the government had presented sufficient evidence of the vessel’s statelessness, id. at 103–04, at *3, and that the Due Process Clause does not require that MDLEA crimes committed on board stateless vessels have a nexus to the United States, id. at 104–05, at *4-5. These conclusions apply equally to Suarez’s arguments concerning the sufficiency of the evidence of the vessel’s statelessness and the Due Process Clause’s constraints on the MDLEA.

Suarez has raised no arguments on appeal that were not advanced by his codefendant and resolved by this Court in Van Der End. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.