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which makes it just 14.99 for the whole year and now today's video it was july the 16th 1970 and
mario escamilla was purist the 33 year old native of santa barbara california had just learned that
co-worker donald porky levitt had broken into his trailer and stolen his most prized possession
a 15 gallon jug of homemade raisin wine determined to put an end to such theft escamilla grabbed a
rifle and stormed off to confront levitt he found the thief with his boss benny lightsey
getting roaring drunk on a potent mixture of 190 proof grain alcohol grape juice and escamilla's
wine escamilla waved his rifle in the men's faces warned them to keep the hands of his property and
grabbed what remained of his wine and stormed back to his trailer some minutes later escamilla heard
a knock on the door expecting it to be leavitt out for revenge escomir cocked his rifle and
aimed it at the door but the man who entered the trailer was not levitt but benny lightsey who had
come to reason with escamilla though the two men were longtime friends they soon began to argue and
a fist fight broke out unknown to escamilla the rifle he had chosen was faulty and in the midst
of the struggle the weapon went off hitting lightsy square in the chest lighty collapsed
the floor and he bled out within minutes while at first glance this might seem like a clear-cut case
of homicide or at least voluntary manslaughter there was one big catch this deadly incident
took place not in some american trailer park but on a massive iceberg floating in the arctic ocean
mario escamilla didn't know it yet but he had just unleashed one of the most tangled and confusing
legal cases in united states history one whose consequences still resonate to this day fletcher's
ice island also known as t3 was an 11 kilometer long five kilometer wide iceberg discovered by the
united states air force in the early 1950s thought to have carved off a glacier on the eastern side
of canada's elsmere island the iceberg was named after air force colonel joseph fletcher the
first person to land an aircraft on its surface caught in a current known as the beaufort jar t3
slowly drifted through the waters north of canada and alaska completing a clockwise circuit every
two years from march 1952 onwards the air force and the u.s navy established a series
of research stations on t3 to monitor arctic weather conditions and to conduct geophysical
and oceanographic research these stations were a direct response to the soviet union who had
maintained meteorological drift stations on arctic ice flows since 1937. the iceberg was periodically
occupied until 1979 when the last research station was abandoned t3 then slowly drifted through
the fram strait between greenland and svalbard entering the atlantic ocean and finally melting
away in 1983 but while built and maintained by the u.s military the outposts on t3 were largely
staffed by civilian contractors mario escamilla for instance was an electronics technician from
the general motors defense research laboratory porky levitt was a meteorologist from the u.s navy
arctic research laboratory and benny leitzy was an employee of the united states weather bureau and
the appointed director of the station conditions on t3 were primitive to put it rather mildly even
by 1970 the station where escamilla and his 18 colleagues lived and worked consisted of little
more than a diesel power plant and a cluster of prefabricated wooden james way hearts and
trailers which served as laboratories and living quarters in the winter the sun did not rise for
six months with temperatures dipping below minus 50 degrees celsius and winds reaching speeds
of 250 kilometers an hour radio and satellite communications were spotty at best and during
the summer the ice runway turned to slash meaning no aircraft could land and the station could only
be resupplied by parachute drop but the greatest danger facing the station's inhabitants was
boredom outside of work there was very little to do and for entertainment the station had
only a handful of books a few 16-millimeter film reels and two eight-track cassettes
all of which the technicians and scientists had read watched or listened to dozens of times
over in such an environment alcoholism was rife with many inhabitants spending their off hours
going on raging benders with homemade wine or high-proof alcohol brought in by resupply flights
one particularly mean drunk was porky leather too after guzzling his way through his own liquor
supply armed himself with a meat cleaver and went on a rampage through the station
stealing his colleague stashes it was this history of violence escamilla later claimed that drove him
to grab a rifle from the station's common store before confronting levitt following many light
seas shooting the incident was reported to the mainland by radio and an investigative team was
dispatched to t3 the team composed of navy and coast guard intelligence officers and an assistant
district attorney took two days to reach the iceberg via thule air force base in greenland a
harrowing journey through brutal arctic storms the team then grabbed escamilla the rifle and lights
his frozen body and whisked them back to the united states and here dear viewer is where things
start to get very very complicated at first the whole case seemed to be fairly cut and dry after
all escamilla freely admitted to shooting leitzy he really could not have done otherwise there
wasn't any room in the tiny trailer for another assailant and the incident was partially witnessed
by charles parody escamilla's roommate and the man who had informed him of levitt's theft and
also richard scattellini who was standing outside the trailer when the rifle went off and the case
might very well have been a simple one were it not for one thorny issue that of jurisdiction
for what no legal expert seemed able to determine was who exactly had legal authority over ice
island t3 and thus who if anyone had the right to try mario escamilla while t3 was administered by
the u.s air force as a civilian contractor escomir could not be subjected to a military court martial
and while escamilla was a u.s citizen the crime had not been committed on sovereign u.s territory
theoretically the u.s could have made a territorial claim to t3 as it had with dozens
of uninhabited fertilizer-rich guano islands in the 19th century unlike those islands however
t3 was temporary and would eventually melt away meaning no nation could claim the iceberg as its
own furthermore in 1909 the u.s state department had rejected a proposal by admiral robert peary
to annex the north pole officially endorsing the view that no nation could claim sovereignty over
frozen arctic waters so who then had jurisdiction over t3 the country with the strongest claim
to the region was canada which had long claimed sovereignty over a large swath of the arctic ocean
in 1907 canadian senator pascal poirier proposed what he called sector theory in which sovereignty
over arctic waters was determined by drawing straight lines from a country's borders to the
north pole whatever land or water lay between those lines was that country's sovereign
territory conveniently the system gave canada almost complete control of the entire arctic
archipelago under surrounding waters however sector theory was never formally adopted by the
canadian government and canadian sovereignty over its arctic waters has been actively contested by
several nations particularly russia at the time of benny leitzy's killing t3 was located 84 degrees
north and 106 degrees west far outside the then three mile limit of canada's official territorial
waters furthermore while international convention recognizes bodies of ice like glaciers as
sovereign territory while they are still attached to the land once they become detached they become
res nulias no man's land nor that canada wanted to get involved anyway upon learning of the case the
canadian department for external affairs informed the u.s state department that it wished to avoid
interfering with a criminal trial simply to resolve a complex point of international law
thus the country waived any jurisdiction that it might have had while making it clear that the
outcome of the case would have no bearing on its territorial claim to the arctic the t3 murder case
was entirely a united states matter or was it because even if t3 was not sovereign territory
the first place escamilla landed after leaving the iceberg was green and bus as some legal experts
argued at the time the case officially fell under the jurisdiction of denmark which administers the
island nation however like canada denmark also waived its jurisdiction over the case these
decisions left the t3 case in an unprecedented state of legal limbo with many lawyers doubting
any country had the legal authority to try escomir as one legal expert noted it may shock the layman
to learn that there may be parts of the world in which possible murders may go untried one
proposed solution to this conundrum was to treat t3 as a seagoing vessel and to prosecute the case
according to the 1958 convention on the high seas but as you probably guessed by now this solution
was not entirely satisfactory either while the arctic ocean certainly counted as the high seas
maritime law as written only applies to navigable waters which the dense ice flows surrounding t3
most certainly were not then again rapid advances in technology were quickly changing what it meant
for a body of water to be navigable in the same year as the convention on the high seas
was written the world's first nuclear submarine uss nautilus completed a crossing of the arctic
while submerged under the polar ice sheet a feat that would have been impossible for a conventional
surface vessel furthermore the practice of lodging a ship in pack ice and letting it drift with the
currents a method pioneered by polar explorer free chop nansen in 1893 technically made even
the densest ice pack navigable in the end the u.s state department turned to another principle of
maritime law known as the state of the flag rule this rule states that the primary legal authority
aboard a vessel at sea whether made of ice or not is the state under whose flag the vessel flies so
entrenched is this principle in international maritime trade that even if a vessel is sailing
through a state's territorial waters said state has no authority to prosecute crimes committed
aboard the vessel unless those crimes directly affect the state's own territory and citizens
thus as escamilla was a u.s citizen serving as an outpost flying the u.s flag the united states
had personal if not territorial jurisdiction over the case but even this breakthrough raised
still further questions namely which u.s state should escamilla be tried in while escamilla
was a resident of california he was ultimately arraigned and tried in the district court for the
eastern district of virginia for the simple and expedient reason that this was the state in which
she had first landed after departing greenland the trial was presided over by judge orrin
lewis who indicated that in the absence of a clear precedent his judgment would not be final and that
he expected the matter to be resolved on appeal but even with the trial finally underway there
were still no end to the thorny legal questions as kamir's defence team questioned whether their
client could be fairly judged by a jury of his peers in virginia arguing that the only people
fit to judge his actions in context were back on the ice island t3 the research station they
claimed was a uniquely harsh environment which placed its inhabitants under extreme stress the
station had no law enforcement presence and doors were left unlocked due to the risk of fire under
such circumstances property rights were protected using weapons or not at all given porky levitt's
previous drunken rampage with a meat cleaver it was therefore argued that escamilla was fully
justified in bringing a rifle when confronting him the defense also called on character witnesses to
testify to escamilla's usually docile nature as well as a firearms expert who confirmed
that the rifle escamilla had used was faulty and could easily be set off without pulling
the trigger but judge lewis was having none of this instructing the jury to ignore the possibly
unique conditions on t3 and limiting the number of character witnesses that the defense could call
in the end the jury found marie escamilla not guilty of second-degree murder on the high
seas but did find him guilty of involuntary manslaughter on the high seas escamilla was
sentenced to three years in prison but released on bail pending the outcome of an appeal said appeal
was made on two grounds first the lingering doubts about the ultimate jurisdiction over the case and
second errors in the conduct of the trial itself particularly the limiting of character witnesses
the appeal was brought before the united states court of appeals for the 4th circuit which heard
the case on august 17th 1970. the panel of six judges was divided on the issue of jurisdiction
and thus upheld the original provisional ruling that the case could be tried by an american court
on the basis of maritime law however they also upheld the appeal on the basis of procedure and
ordered a retrial instructing the judge and jury to consider the unique conditions on t3 and the
testimony of character witnesses with these new provisions in place a second jury acquitted mario
scamir of all charges and he was set free the escamilla case caused a stir among u.s legal
experts who pointed out that haddis khamir levitt and leitzy been citizens of canada or another
country the viability of a trial would have been even more in doubt and may very well have led to
an international incident in 1984 however the legal loophole responsible for this ambiguity
was closed in the u.s at least by amendment 72 title 18 of the united states criminal code
which extended special maritime and territorial jurisdiction to any place outside the jurisdiction
of any nation with respect to an offense by or against a national of the united states while the
escamilla case might seem like a freak one-off occurrence the incidence is of direct relevance
to another no man's land outer space currently the only body of law governing human activities beyond
earth's atmosphere is the outer space treaty of 1967. however this treaty only regulates the
overt actions of nations proving for example the seizing of territory or the building of military
bases on the moon or planets and the stationing of nuclear weapons in orbit also spacecraft have
generally been considered the sovereign territory of whichever nation launched them meaning that the
same earth-bound rules concerning territory and jurisdiction apply in outer space as well thus if
an american astronaut murders a german astronaut in the japanese module of the international space
station then the case would most likely fall under japanese jurisdiction this neat legal arrangement
however will rapidly fall apart as the likes of spacex and blue origin introduce more and more
private spacecraft and astronauts to the final frontier though registered to their country
of origin such private craft are not currently considered sovereign territory and thus lie in
a murky legal gray area without a body of law to regulate the behavior of private citizens in space
it is only a matter of time before we get a repeat of the 1970 escamilla case but in space even the
closest earthbound analog to space antarctica is of little help here well the 1959 antarctic treaty
prohibits any nation from stationing military forces on antarctica seven main signatory nations
argentina australia chile france new zealand norway and the united kingdom maintain territorial
claims on the continent for use in peaceful scientific research these territorial claims
have no permanent residence so the inhabitants of the various scientific research stations on
the continent remain citizens of their respective sovereign nations therefore any crimes committed
in any of these territories fall under the jurisdiction of the administering nation and there
have been a lot of crimes including a 1984 case where a stir crazy doctor burned down argentina's
almarante brown station after being forced to stay another winter and a 2018 case where an engineer
at the russian bellinghausen station stabbed a welder for spoiling the endings of the books
that he was reading holy [ __ ] while these cases exposed the difficulty of dealing with crime in
such a remote location for instance for lack of a proper jail cell the stab happy russian engineer
had to be locked up in the station's orthodox chapel all were relatively uncomplicated from
a legal standpoint involving citizens of a single nation on territory belonging to said nation but
in the wild west of outer space with hundreds of spacecraft and astronaut from a dozen nations
flying around the legal situation is likely to get very complicated very fast so if you're
looking for a promising new career that looks impressive on a business card and sounds sexy at
a cocktail party why we recommend space lawyer after all in space no one can hear you testify