After serving 20 years of a life sentence in a German prison, Mohammed Ali Hamadi has been released to Lebanon. The U.S. and the family of Robert Dean Stethem, who was beaten and killed during the hijacking of a U.S. airliner in 1985, are furious and want to apprehend him and bring him to trial in the U.S.
Under the Bush Doctrine we can do what we want. But it seems to violate the spirit of the Fifth Amendment. That is, he has been tried for his crimes and he was found guilty. He was given a sentence, and he was paroled under the terms of the sentence.
The 5th doesn’t say ‘nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy in the U.S. of life or limb’. It just says that people will not be subjected to double jeopardy. Given that Hamadi has already been tried and convicted of the beating and shooting of Stethem, and that he has served a sentence for the offense, even though the process was not in the U.S., wouldn’t kidnapping him and putting him on trial violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the 5th Amendment?
(I have no love for hijackers or terrorists. Just asking about the Rule of Law.)
See this thread, where I asked how common it was for someone to be tried twice for the same crime by different countries (in relation to Hamadi).
The answer (from Gfactor), is that it’s rare, especially since extradition treaties typically contain double jeopardy clauses. So the US couldn’t have had Hamadi extradited from Germany after he was released, since our treaty with them contains just such a clause, but its legal to try him for the same crime if the US can somehow get him here. This is due to the “dual sovereign doctrine”.
In US v. Wheeler (1978), which is linked to in that thread, a man (Wheeler) was tried by a Navajo tribal court for contributing to the delinquency of a minor and convicted. Later, the feds indicted him for statutory rape. He tried to have the indictment dismissed, claiming that since contributing to the delinquency of a minor was a lesser included offense of statutory rape, that would be double jeopardy. SCOTUS ruled that it didn’t matter if it was an included offense, since the federal courts and the Najavo court were seperate sovereigns. So, if someone can be tried twice for the same crime in that situation, I can’t imagine being tried by both the US and Germany would be a problem.