Who’s in Charge of Investigating Deaths in Antarctica? — Criminal Behavior Down Below?

– Justin

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In the United States, if you commit a crime, you are tried by either a state or federal court, depending on the type of crime and where it took place. American courts even have jurisdiction for certain crimes committed outside the nation’s borders, like a murder on a ship flying the American flag, or a crime at a U.S. military base or installation overseas. Pretty straightforward.

Antarctica, though, is anything but straightforward. Dr. Alan Hemmings is an expert on Antarctic governance and spent two winters at the South Pole with the British Antarctic Survey. In an email interview, he explains that there are no clear legal jurisdictions in Antarctica, because there are no recognized territories.

Seven countries — Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New Zealand and Norway — make pie-shaped territorial claims on the icy wasteland, and the United States and Russia exercise sovereignty at their own research stations. But none of these claims are officially recognized by the Antarctic Treaty, and a few of them even overlap.

Instead, Hemmings says, the general rule is that a crime committed by a U.S. citizen at a U.S.-owned research facility would be prosecuted in a U.S. court. The same for Russia, New Zealand, Japan or any other of the 29 countries operating research stations in Antarctica.

“But if the dead person and the alleged murderer are from different states [countries] and don’t recognize each other’s claim (and most don’t), particularly if the critical events occur away from anybody’s station — say, at a camp site — then it won’t necessarily be clear who has jurisdiction,” Hemmings says.

As far as Hemmings knows, there’s never been a criminal prosecution for a murder committed in Antarctica. That’s not to say the frozen continent is free from violence and vice. The dark and frigid Antarctic winter, coupled with long stretches of isolation or cramped cohabitation — plus loads of heavy drinking — have driven many to the brink. Stories circulate of a Russian man who killed a companion over a chess game, and of a researcher sick with cabin fever who burned down his own station.

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Given that it’s more than 2,000 miles across and without a gas station in sight, driving across Antarctica is a daunting task. Tune in as Marshall Brain explains how it works.Ultimately New Zealand claimed legal jurisdiction in the Marks case, since it had possession of his body. An investigation uncovered no clear evidence of foul play, so there were no arrests or prosecutions. The leading theory is that Marks drank a bad batch of liquor, as his autopsy showed his body contained lethal traces of methanol.

Hemmings believes that in the event of a particularly heinous crime involving citizens from different countries, the parties “will likely cooperate with each other and may very well agree that one of them takes jurisdiction, or come up with some imaginative solution.”

But some legal observers are concerned that goodwill and cooperation aren’t enough, and that the decades-old Antarctic Treaty needs to be updated before a truly messy crime happens on the ice. In a 2003 paper on the legal “Wild West” that is Antarctica, Towson University law professor W. Michael Seganish proposed that the 22 nations that made up a governing committee for Antarctic affairs establish a unified criminal code.

Currently, “one cannot easily determine whether an action is a criminal act because of the various countries involved and multiple bases for jurisdiction. This is an intolerable situation for a criminal defendant and violates any reasonable concept of due process,” Seganish wrote.

In the absence of such an international agreement, there’s no saying how or where an Antarctic murderer would be called to justice. This issue may become increasingly important as more and more nations and corporations eye Antarctica’s rich oil reserves for future exploitation.

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In 2008, the official coroner’s report on Rodney Marks was released, which did not say how Marks came to be poisoned. The New Zealand coroner noted that the National Science Foundation (which is in charge of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station) and Raytheon Polar Services (which handled base operations) would not cooperate with the investigation.
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