Are there any notorious cases of someone committing a crime and then fleeing to the United States to avoid extradition (i.e., like Roman Polanski, only in reverse)?
Are you counting political defections?
Interesting question. It would have to be someone fleeing a country which the US government doesn’t like, and would have a knee-jerk tendency to say yes to the asylum request just as a way of saying FU to the other country’s government.
Therefore, it would probably be someone from Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, China (prior to circa 2000 A.D.), or more recently Venezuela or another leftist South American country.
Asylum is a very different animal from simply residing somewhere to avoid extradition.
Actually, now that I think about it, there are any number of people from Muslim countries that might have found refuge in the US who are charged with things like Desicrating the Koran or Blapheming Islam.
It could be an American who is accused of committing a crime abroad, in some country with whom we do not have an extradition treaty. If he flees home to the US successfully, the other country would have no legal means to reach him.
As a general principle of extradition, the act must be a crime in both countries. So, we wouldn’t have to extradite a person to the UK because they insulted the Queen’s honor or whatever.
There are a number of countries we don’t have extradition treaties with, including Afghanistan, Botswana, Russia, China, Kuwait, Niger, Uganda, and many others. There doesn’t seem to be any provision of law that specifically allows the US to extradite a person to a county with which we have no reciprocal agreement for extradition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles is wanted in Cuba and Venezuala and has avoided extradition.
Didn’t some of the IRA accused of murder back in the 70s/80s flee the UK and successfully fight extradition from the US?
If it’s a genuine pure crime, as accepted by decent moral standards (e.g. polanski’s alleged crimes which iirc were rape are not acceptable anywhere decent where as koran desecration is not only accceptable but practically encouraged in some places) and we are discounting things where asylum, politics or intelligence operations are involved (if we weren’t I could give you thousands of examples VERY easily), I very much doubt it. Why run away to a place with far nastier laws than most civilised countries?
Pains me to say this as a person WELL aware of some of the atrocities the IRA committed but you could certainly argue that they were involved in a legitimate struggle for self determination even if their methods were horrid.
I would have said the same thing about confederate soldiers in the 1860s btw.
Joyce McKinney (known as the ‘sex in chains’ case here)
Actually, the USA granted political asylum to a French citizen maybe…5 years ago or so. The motive was that he was persecuted by the French judicial system. I can’t remember the details at the moment, but I think he had been involved in a custody battle, his ex-wife’s new husband was a well-connected prosecutor in a famously corrupt southern France area (he was from Nice, I believe), and there were accusations of child molestation. He might have been actually persecuted. It seems to me it was a federal court in California that made a ruling on his case, but I’m not sure at all.
The asylum, I think, allowed him to avoid facing the child molestation charges.
Argh! All my long post was lost.
Anyway, I found the infos about this asylum case. The guy is called Karim Kamal and asylum was granted on december 16 2000 (times goes by quickly) by judge Ronald Ohata in Los Angeles federal court and the ruling was upheld by judge Christine E. Stancill on June 2001.
I got the main fact wrong. He was accusing a judge of having molested her daughter, not the other way around. I won’t go into the details, but this case does stink to high heavens, implicating judges, prosecutors, judicial experts, the president of the local bar, the local dean of judges and whatnot. It’s still not settled more than ten years later, there has been a murder, two lawyer refused to be involved out of fear of being murdered too, one resigned following pressures from the bar, and a famous prosecutor failed to clean those Augean stables before being prosecuted himself and having to quit (for the benefit of the two other French posters : Eric de Montgolfier). The city was indeed, not surprisingly, Nice.
So, he didn’t escape prosecution for child molestation by being granted asylum but he sure did escape something.
I imagine in the future there may be those who stay in the USA to avoid war crimes prosecution for behaviour in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Guantanamo Bay. Wasn’t there a list of people wanted for rendition flights by France or Germany? I do recall the kidnap issue with some middle-eastern type where the relevant US citizens returned to the USA from Italy before the details could be worked out.
I don’t know if you would consider this the same thing but I’ve seen a couple dual citizens post online about trouble in one country where the obvious advice seems to be just never return.
Not necessary. Technically an asylee is any person who meets (or believes they meet) the criteria to be a refugee, but enters the U.S. in some other way. Once inside, they apply for asylum. (Normally refugee status is granted before someone enters the country.) There is no technical distinction for “political” asylum, (as opposed to some other type). The point is that if this person goes back they’ll suffer persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. It may or may not involve some kind of criminal prosecution for a crime, and the determination has little to do with whether the US government “likes” the government of the country they’re fleeing.
When someone comes in this way, they apply for asylum, and then wait for the DHS to check into the validity of the claim. If the DHS finds that it’s just someone who committed a crime and is trying to avoid a legitimate justice system, then they eventually have to leave.
Many Cubans and Haitians come in this way, (but they’re technically called “parolees” rather than “asylees,” because they have a special status under the Cuban/Haitian Entrant Act). They get into Mexico, for example, and they make their way to Tijuana, and show up at the US consulate right there at the border crossing, declaring their application. They get locked up for a day or two while DHS checks its records, and then they’re allowed into the US as “parolees” while their application is processed.
Obviously you can say that the US government “doesn’t like” the Cuban government, but you can’t say that about the Haitians. It has more to do with their special status under the Cuban/Haitian Entrant Act, and if they can show good cause to be granted asylee status.