Extradition from U.S. to foreign nation

• Pages: 18-20

Page 18

On January 25, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to muster four votes to review on the merits whether it was lawful to extradite Manuel Noriega (Petitioner) to France. Failing to grant a writ of certiorari, in effect, left the lower courts free to allow this extradition to take place.

From 1983 until his surrender to U.S. troops in 1990, Petitioner was the de facto leader of Panama. Though he had for a time been an important U.S. regional ally, a federal court convicted him of drug- related offenses and sentenced him to 30 years in jail. The district court also designated Petitioner as a "prisoner of war." In 2007, just before his scheduled release on parole, France asked for his extradition on drug charges.

Relying on the district court's "prisoner of war" (POW) designation, Petitioner then filed a habeas corpus petition. Petitioner argued that, as a POW, the U.S. must return him to his home country of Panama. The district court agreed that his POW designation did entitle him to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but dismissed the habeas claims. See Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3316, 75 U.N.T.S. 135; Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3516, 973 U.N.T.S. 336. Petitioner refiled the same claims under 29 U.S.C. Section 2241, and the district court stayed the extradition pending Petitioner's appeal.

The Eleventh Circuit disagreed with Petitioner. See 2009 International Law Update 44. The Court accepted the district court's designation of Petitioner as a POW; it agreed, however, with the Government's interpretation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) Pub. L. No. 109- 366, 120 Stat. 2631. Section 5(a) provides that the Geneva Conventions are neither self-executing or nor judicially enforceable in habeas corpus actions.

In the absence of four justices who favor granting certiorari, the U.S. Supreme Court cannot review the matter. Justices Thomas and Scalia, however, voted to grant the writ. The two justices consider it the Supreme Court's duty to clarify important questions of federal law. In this case, the Supreme Court would have had a chance to elucidate several sections of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War:

These were the two issues they deemed most important: [1] Whether Section 5 of the MCA does preclude Petitioner from invoking the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, as a source of rights in a habeas corpus proceeding'; and '[2] Whether, assuming Petitioner can assert a claim based on the...