Coast Guard boarded a ship based on a whistleblower’s claim the crew was dumping oily waste at sea. The boarding was based on 14 U.S.C. § 89(a). The Coast Guard asked for the logbook for oily waste, and the crew produced it. United States v. Fleet Mgmt., Ltd., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74277 (E.D. Pa. August 20, 2009).
Reasonable suspicion was the standard for boarding:
Dyachenko’s initial argument is that the warrantless seizure of his notepads violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The government argues that the seizure was valid pursuant to 14 U.S.C. § 89(a), which permits the Coast Guard to make warrantless searches and seizures onboard a ship for “the prevention, detection, and suppression of violations of laws of the United States.” Searches conducted pursuant to that statutory authority require only a “reasonable suspicion of criminal activity” to survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny. United States v. Varlack Ventures, Inc., 149 F.3d 212, 216-17 (3d Cir. 1998). The reasonable suspicion, however, “must be based on specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences drawn from those facts ….” Id. at 217 (quoting United States v. Roy, 869 F.2d 1427, 1430 (11th Cir. 1989).
There was no discussion of standing other than the court’s comment that there was no personal information in the book, not that it would matter:
During a series of evidentiary hearings held in early 2008, Marine Science Technician Chief Matthew Jones, an experienced Coast Guard officer, testified that he led the investigation onboard the Valparaiso Star on January 24, 2007. He stated that the Coast Guard boarded the ship only after receiving information from a former crew member, Motorman Gopal Singh, that he had been fired recently for refusing to participate in the illegal dumping of large quantities of the ship’s oily waste at open sea. He further testified that shortly after boarding, he and other Coast Guard personnel uncovered evidence which he believed corroborated the whistleblower’s claim. This included the presence of an unusual hose beneath the deck plates in the engine room, discrepancies between the ship’s “Oil Record Book” and the daily tank sounding log, and the presence of oil in atypical places aboard the vessel.
Armed with that knowledge and the information provided by the whistleblower, Jones and other Coast Guard personnel interviewed the engine room staff, including Dyachenko, regarding the questionable activity. Jones testified that during the interview, and in response to questions about illegal activity, Dyachenko displayed a notepad that had been on his person. According to the investigative report created that same day, Dyachenko stated that the notepad contained sounding logs “for his knowledge on what needs to be done in the engine room.” Nonetheless, he refused to hand over the notepad to the investigators at that time. Dyachenko ended the interview by stating that he wished to disclose “the truth” but was concerned that the investigators would write it down.
Jones responded by seeking the aid of the Captain, defendant Grewal. He informed Grewal that he had authority to seize the notepad and asked for Grewal’s help in obtaining it. Dyachenko produced both that notepad and another for Grewal, who immediately turned them over to the Coast Guard. Both notepads contain detailed technical information relating to maintenance of the engine room and little if any personal information.
We conclude that by the time Dyachenko displayed the notepad to the investigators and stated that it contained information related to maintenance of the engine room, the Coast Guard had a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and was authorized to seize the notebook under § 89(a). Consequently, we will deny the motion of Dyachenko insofar as it requests suppression of the notebooks under the Fourth Amendment.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
