A while ago, I posted about a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, which held that Canada will not extradite a person accused of a capital crime in the U.S. unless American authorities give a committment that they will not execute the accused: Canada, Extradition, and the Death Penalty.
Earlier this month, our Supreme Court gave its decision in another set of extradition cases. It barred the extradition of several persons involved in telephone scamming, on the basis that the accused would not get a fair trial in the United States, based on statements by the judge and prosecutor assigned to the cases: United States of America v. Cobb.
The statement from the judge, in imposing sentence on one of the co-accused in the scam was:
The statement from the prosecutor, given in an interview in a Canadian public affairs t.v. program, was:
The Supreme Court’s analysis was that the trial judge had pre-judged the sentence for anyone who exercised their legal right to resist extradition, and that the prosecutor was effectively threatening them with homosexual rape as an extra-judicial inducement to come back to the U.S.
Seems there’s a couple of questions here. There’s the issue of Canada applying its standards to judge the American system, as in the previous cases. Also, what do people think of the statements by the judge and prosecutor, and the Canadian courts’ reaction to them?