When the FBI Comes Calling…®
HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND SMUGGLING (continued)
Transportation of Slaves or Peons
The following five statutes deal with the slave trade. It is not entirely clear what difference there is between the slave trade and human trafficking (18 U.S.C. §§ 1590 et seq.) other than the punishment for trafficking is more severe than the transportation of slaves. Furthermore, given that the statutes that are left over from the criminalization of the African slave trade are somewhat anachronistic in the modern era, and specifically point to eradicating the African slave trade, United States courts may have trouble applying these statutes to modern circumstances. In any case, the following statutes deal with the slave trade and the section that follows afterward deals with human smuggling.
18 U.S.C. § 1582
The Crime
It is a violation of section 1582 for a person, whether he is master, factor, or owner, to:
- build, fit out, equip, load, or otherwise prepare a vessel for the purpose of procuring any person from a foreign kingdom or country
- to be transported and held, sold, or otherwise disposed of as a slave,
- or held to service or labor; or
- cause such a vessel to be readied for that purpose. 18 U.S.C. § 1582.
The Punishment
- The punishment for violating section 1582 is a fine, imprisonment for not more than seven years, or both.
Jurisdiction
This section applies to "whoever, whether as master, factor, or owner," and applies to any port or place within the United States.
Case Law Interpreting Section 1582
There is little modern case law concerning section 1582. Most of the case law involves the predecessor statute. This is largely due to the fact that section 1582 was originally part of a set of early nineteenth-century statutes dealing with the African slave trade. United States v. Shackney, 333 F.2d 475, 481 (2nd Cir. 1964). However, some of the prosecutions under the predecessor statute can at least illuminate the elements of a violation of section 1582.
United States v. Gooding, 25 U.S. 460 (1827).
According to Gooding, the owner of a ship which has been fitted out for the slave trade does not need to be present at the fitment. Gooding at 471-72. Furthermore, the purpose of the fitment does not need to be actually completed; that is to say, that a vessel fitted for the slave trade is not required to have picked up slaves to be a violation of the predecessor to section 1582. Id. at 472.
- The statute punishes the fitting out of a vessel with intent to employ here in the slave trade, however innocent the equipment may be. … It is the act combined with the intent, and not either separately, which is punishable….
- [A]ny preparations for a slave voyage, which clearly manifest or accompany the illegal intent, even though incomplete and imperfect, and before the departure of the vessel from port, do yet constitute a fitting out within the purview of the statute. Id. at 472-73.