New Federal Sentencing Reporter issue explores “Sentencing ‘Boat Defendants’”
The War on Drugs has been fought for decades on a wide range of fronts, and a vast array of “war correspondents” have reported on a host of drug-sentencing stories. And yet, as documented in this issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, many battles in this persistent war remain little known and rarely discussed. By shining a light on a largely hidden aspect of the drug war, we can gain a deeper understanding of how the criminal justice system struggles to prosecute the drug war effectively and justly.
Through new groundbreaking data collection and original research, Professors Kendra McSweeney, Mat Coleman, and Douglas Berman (and others assisting with this project) have made a remarkable contribution to what we know about a distinct group of federal drug offenders, known as boat defendants, and how the federal justice system responds to their criminal activities. They have done our field a great service not only by documenting new examples of certain well-known difficulties in federal drug sentencing but also by spotlighting innovative questions about modern sentencing practices and patterns. Their work uncovers and presents more than an important drug war story; they provide even more than a gripping and, at times, heartbreaking sentencing story. Fundamentally, they are illuminating a profound justice policy story.
Who are the boat defendants? They are a distinctive subset of drug couriers. McSweeney et al. describe them as “the hundreds of men who are intercepted every year by the U.S. Coast Guard … on cocaine-laden boats and are brought to the United States for prosecution under the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act…. Typically caught with hundreds of kilos of high-purity cocaine, they face serious federal penalties, including a mandatory minimum statutory sentence of ten years in prison.”
In addition to focusing on a little-known group of defendants, McSweeney et al. have built their “own dataset to ‘follow the defendant’ from the initial at-sea encounter with law enforcement through eventual deportation from the United States.” This original and granular approach not only opens a distinctive window into boat defendant cases but also provides a means to explore sentencing outcomes differently and to examine what we may miss when reviewing conventional data only.
The novel and groundbreaking nature of the boat defendant data collection and analyses prompted the editors of Federal Sentencing Reporter to have this work serve as a focal point for a full issue of FSR. To that end, in the summer of 2024 FSR editors worked with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law to convene a workshop of practitioners and academics to discuss the boat defendant research and foster written commentary for FSR. We are now extremely excited to have this important study and reactions thereto published in FSR. Readers must take in the full issue to appreciate the complexity of the research and the many nuances of related commentary.