US v. Moran: Moran worked in Okinawa as a janitor in a local church, a position obtained via the “Veteran’s Affairs Transition Assistance Program” at a local airbase, where his wife worked. While there, he groomed and sexually abused a 14-year-old girl. When the Air Force began investigating, “Moran fled back to the United State,” but he was charged anyway under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows the prosecution in the United States of conduct outside the US where the defendant was “employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces outside the United States.” The Government’s position was that the Act applied to Moran either due to his own employment or his wife’s. Moran eventually entered into a plea agreement in which he agreed to waive his right to appeal anything other than ineffective assistance of counsel or prosecutorial misconduct. He was convicted on two counts and sentenced to 420 months in prison.
The Fourth Circuit dismissed Moran’s appeal, on the Government’s motion. Moran sought to challenge whether there was a sufficient factual basis for him to be prosecuted under the Act. He argued that this escaped the scope of the appeal waiver, as it was a question of jurisdiction which can never be waived. The court, however, distinguished between subject-matter jurisdiction, “the court’s authority to hear a given type of case,” and jurisdictional elements, which go to “the power of Congress to regulate the conduct at issue, not the jurisdiction of the court to hear a particular case.” Whether the facts of a case satisfied the required jurisdictional element was therefore not the kind of jurisdictional issue that escaped the appeal waiver’s scope.
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