The World in U.S. Courts: Fall 2013 - Criminal Law
July.11.2013
The Fifth Circuit affirmed the U.S. Government’s partial use of electronic trace data collected by Mexican officials in a prosecution for illegal arms trafficking. The Court held, in part, that the presumption against extraterritorial application does not apply because the conduct of Mexican officials, using a U.S. Government database, is a law enforcement activity that is not part of the determination whether the conduct in question was extraterritorial. As a result, the Court rejected the plaintiff’s arguments that the Gun Control Act only allows trace data from domestic criminal investigations.
[Editor’s Note: Compare the reasoning of this case with that in United States v. Stokes, discussed elsewhere in this report.]