Criminal Law

• Author: International Law Group

William Bishop, a U.S. citizen, took part in a conspiracy to sell 1,956 pounds of marihuana in the Bahamas. In 1995, a Bahamian court sentenced him to five years imprisonment and an $80,000 fine. If Bishop failed to pay the fine, then the prison sentence would increase another five years. Bishop did not pay the fine, thus adding five years to his sentence. The Bahamian prison authorities later granted Bishop a "remission" of his sentence to six years and eight months.

In 1996, the U.S. Department of Justice requested that The Bahamas transfer Bishop to the U.S. to serve the remainder of his sentence, pursuant to the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons (March 21, 1983, 35 U.S.T. 2867, T.I.A.S. No. 10824) (entered into force for U.S. on July 1, 1985) to which both the U.S. and The Bahamas are parties. A U.S. magistrate held a Bahamian hearing involving Bishop and other U.S. offenders to confirm their consent to the transfer. At a later proceeding in New York, counsel informed Bishop that only a proceeding in The Bahamas could modify his sentence.

When Bishop failed to pay his fine, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons recalculated his prison sentence to include the additional five years imposed by the Bahamian court in case of non-payment. The U.S. Parole Commission later converted the additional five years into supervised release.

A federal public defender argued on Bishop's behalf that imprisonment for inability to pay would be an unconstitutional imprisonment for debt in the U.S. and filed for habeas corpus in federal court. The district court eventually struck Bishop's extra five-year sentence for non-payment of the fine. The U.S. Court of Appeals holds that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to grant habeas relief in such a case, and therefore remands for dismissal.

"To decide if the district court had jurisdiction to grant collateral, habeas relief on a foreign sentence is to delineate the interaction between the Treaty and the implementing statutes, which determine the procedure in the United States for administering a foreign-imposed sentence to be completed here. (Cits.). ... The Treaty signatories recognized 'that foreigners who are deprived of their liberty as a result...