If I murdered somebody in Antartica?

Factual Questions
21

skogcat inquired:

Originally posted by Cisco
I read an article about 4 (5?) guys that were parachuting in Antarctica and all but one of them forgot to open their 'chute (I guess when the landscape doesn’t vary it’s hard to tell how high up you are.) Anyway, when the survivor got back to the country they departed from (Brazil?) he was heavily questioned and I think they might have even held him as a murder suspect for awhile. So maybe it’s just whoever gets their hands on you first.

That sounds ineteresting in an unbelievable kind of way. Do you know if that article is available on the net somewhere?

http://airsports.fai.org/may98/may9804.html

TD
(I saw a comic on Comedy Central the other night
who said something to the effect, “I can understand
wars about resources, but wars about religion are
about, like, who has the coolest imaginary friend.”)

22

Hey thanks, nasty accident.

23

To respond to the hijack about Canada’s extradition policy, it’s not a blanket ban on extraditing someone charged with a death penalty offence. Rather, the Canadian government will only extradite if the requesting state gives an assurance that it will not kill the individual, if convicted. This position flows from two different sources: the Extradition Treaty with the U.S., and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Under the terms of the Canada-US extradition treaty, when the U.S. asks Canada to extradite someone back to the U.S., Canada has the right under the treaty to make it a condition of extradition that the U.S. will not kill the individual, if convicted. (The U.S. has the same right under the treaty, but since Canada doesn’t have the death penalty, the issue never arises.)

The Supreme Court of Canada has held that in normal circumstances, allowing the extradition of someone who will be killed by the state, if convicted, is contrary to our Charter, and that in most cases the Canadian government should make it a condition of extradition that the requesting state will not kill the individual, if convicted.

clairobscur, I believe that France’s position is the same - not a blanket ban on extradition, but a ban on extraditing someone who will be killed by the requesting state, if convicted. In the notorious Einhorn case, for example, France extradited an American who was charged with murder, after the state of Pennsylvania gave the assurance that Einhorn would not be killed if convicted. Can you comment on this?

For a lively debate on the issue of Canada’s policies, try this link from a year and a half ago, when the Supreme Court of Canada gave its decision in U.S. v. Burns and Ratafy, which decided these issues. (Bryan - this is a more recent decision than Ng, and imposes a much stricter approach.)

By way of a side-note, one of the accused from that case, Burns, is now on trial in Washington for the murder, and is back in the news, this time for having sex in jail with his public defender, possibly on more than one occasion: Lawyer, client may have had sex before jailhouse encounter.