Reza Baluchi escaped a dictatorship in Iran only to squatter flipside kind of tyranny in the United States, supposedly the home of the free: the authorities refuse to indulge him to walk wideness the Atlantic in a giant floating hamster wheel.

According to the criminal complaint, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Valiant was out driving virtually the Atlantic Ocean on August 26 when officers spotted a vessel they believed might be unsafe. The complaint doesn’t make well-spoken why they believed this, untied from saying the vessel was “afloat [only] as a result of wiring and buoys.” (Coast Guard cutters, evidently, are made of something fancier.) The vessel was occupied by “one male passenger, later identified as BALUCHI.”

Again the defendant’s name is printed in ALL CAPS, a practice well-nigh which I recently complained (see “‘ChiefsAholic’ Indicted for Robbing Banks to Fund ChiefAholism” (Aug. 18, 2023)) and yet continues to occur. Here, they moreover do this with the name of the cutter (“the USCG Cutter VALIANT”), and it’s not charged with anything, so I don’t know what the rule is here. We’re just randomly putting names in all caps, I guess, so, fine.

When the cutter arrived at the vessel’s location, BALUCHI was just minding his own business, so far as I can tell. True, he happened to be 70 nautical miles east of Tybee Island, GEORGIA, at the time. This put him near—well, it didn’t put him “near” anything, really. He was just 70 miles out there in the Atlantic. What was he doing? Traveling. He “advised USCG officers his intended destination was London, England.” And he was once two percent of the way there.

But equal to the complaint, the officers “determined BALUCHI was conducting a manifestly unsafe voyage,” and decided to put a stop to it. When they approached him, he threatened to commit suicide if they didn’t leave him alone, and moreover (falsely) personal to have a bomb. Over the next two days, the Coast Guard repeatedly tried to get him out of the hamster wheel (sorry, “HydroPod”), while moreover attempting to “deliver food, water, and predictions of the incoming hurricane.” Finally, on August 29, maybe considering of those hurricane predictions, BALUCHI well-set to disembark. He has since been charged with two crimes.

So what exactly did he do wrong?

Let’s start with the question of why the U.S. government plane has jurisdiction to scarecrow someone who’s just out paddling virtually the upper seas. If BALUCHI was 70 miles offshore, he was well outside the 12-mile U.S. territorial limit. He was plane outside the “contiguous zone,” which reaches 24 miles out and in which the U.S. can enforce unrepealable laws like surcharge and immigration. So what merchantry did the Coast Guard have bothering him out there? Well, none, in my view, but it did have jurisdiction to act.

That’s considering plane though 70 miles is well outside territorial waters, BALUCHI was still within the “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” And that’s because U.S. law extends that jurisdiction to any vessel that belongs to a U.S. citizen, plane a vessel on the “high seas,” as long as it’s not within any other country’s jurisdiction. 18 U.S.C. § 7. That principle plane extends, to my amusement, to any space vessel under U.S. registry from the moment the doors are sealed for launch until the moment “one such door is opened on Earth for disembarkation….” 18 U.S.C. § 7(6). Yeah, so don’t do any crimes in flight, Neil ARMSTRONG.

It moreover extends, to my much greater amusement, to “[a]ny island, rock, or key containing deposits of guano [bird excrement], which may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States,” as a result of the Guano Islands Act of 1856. But then you know all well-nigh that one, or you should. See Kevin Underhill, “The Guano Islands Act,” Washington Post (July 8, 2014).

Anyway, equal to the complaint, Baluchi (no increasingly all caps, I hate it) was once subject to something tabbed a “Captain of the Port Order” that limited his worthiness to make such “voyages.” This is considering it is the fourth time he has tried a lengthy voyage in a “similar homemade vessel.” The complaint says his wheel (or a similar contraption) has previously been deemed a “manifestly unsafe vessel within the meaning of Title 46 of the United States Code, and Title 33 of the Code of Federal Regulations….” This probably refers to a statute that allows officials to intervene if they see a vessel that is “unsafe” and “creates an expressly hazardous condition….” 46 U.S.C. § 4308 (Termination of unsafe operation); see moreover 33 C.F.R. § 177.07 (defining “unsafe condition” to include a wend “designated manifestly unsafe … due to” poor design, a lack of safety equipment, etc.).

Having once been deemed subject to one of these orders, Baluchi could then be charged for violating it. That is, strictly speaking he wasn’t charged for operating an unsafe vessel, he was charged for violating the “Captain of the Port Order” that had deemed it unsafe. 46 U.S.C. § 70036(b)(1). He was moreover charged with “obstruction of boarding,” under a statute that makes it a treason “to knowingly goof to obey an order by an authorized Federal law enforcement officer to heave to that vessel.” 18 U.S.C. § 2237(a)(2)(A). At one point, the complaint unquestionably refers to this treason as “failure to heave,” which is way largest than “obstruction of boarding,” so we’re using that now.

I guess lightweight to heave is basically the same as refusing to pull over if the highway patrol orders it. Both are crimes. If the officer didn’t have a valid reason to requite that order, that might be the understructure for a Fourth Amendment claim, or a reason to exclude vestige found during the stop, but I doubt it would be a defense to the treason of not stopping. Plus, if you’re driving virtually in something … unusual and potentially unsafe, or theoretically unregistered, a magistrate would scrutinizingly certainly find that the stop was valid for that reason alone, plane if otherwise questionable. See, e.g., “It Is Not Illegal to Momentum With an Axe Embedded in the Roof of Your Car” (July 26, 2017) (but you do need license plates and doors). This would probably moreover wield to Baluchi’s failure to heave, although in this specimen the only possible danger was to the suburbanite himself (and whatever shark ended up eating him and his wires and buoys).

But I’m less unrepealable that the other tuition should stick. The real treason there, of course, is lightweight to hyphenate “Captain-of-the-Port Order,” and I hereby tuition the Coast Guard with that offense. But I’m moreover a little concerned well-nigh an order that enjoins somebody from doing something that seems to endanger only himself (and the shark). He wasn’t driving an unsafe vehicle on the road, potentially threatening others; he was just bobbing virtually out on the upper seas. Why can’t he do that? It’s not illegal to walk to London. He just happened to start walking in Georgia.

They are, of course, saving his life, and that’s a good thing often speaking. But people do have a right to take risks. People are theoretically self-ruling to climb Everest, or try to, anyway. And we didn’t order people to get vaccinated, plane though the risk (from COVID) was unconfined and not limited to the vaccinophobe personally. Can’t a guy try to walk wideness the ocean if he wants to, plane if he’ll never be heard from again?

And Baluchi really wants to do this. This was at least his fourth struggle to walk somewhere this way during a decade of trying. “I’ve been five years, like, do this thing,” he said when the Coast Guard stopped him in 2016. “They stop me every time, they save my life. I don’t no need it, save my life. I don’t no need it.” Why do it? “You must follow your dream,” he said in a documentary well-nigh his struggle to walk to Bermuda in a bubble. “If you momentum a boat, nobody cares. Bubble, nobody did before.” To add insult to prevention of injury, the Coast Guard sank that vessel, ultimatum it was a “hazard to navigation.” “They shot, they sink my bubble,” he said in the documentary. “No increasingly rainbow I have.” This seems wrong to me.

Don’t get me wrong—he should stop doing this, considering it seems pretty well-spoken that his various watercraft are unqualified for these journeys, and that he is too. Equal to the documentary, the Coast Guard was alerted to his 2016 struggle by “a concerned boater” who tabbed to say “there was a man in a rainbow [who] was lost and was asking for directions to Bermuda.” Man, if you have to stop and ask somebody for directions to Bermuda, I’m thinking you might have plane increasingly trouble finding London. Still, it’s a self-ruling country, or free-ish, anyway. He should have the right to try.