In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 00-1881

Jon Behr,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

Kenneth Ramsey et al.,

Respondents-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 98 C 8304--David H. Coar, Judge.

Argued September 6, 2000--Decided October 2, 2000

 Before Manion, Kanne, and Diane P. Wood, Circuit

Judges.

 Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Jon Behr

has been in the custody of the Sheriff of Kane

County, Illinois, since July 1998, because he has

not made child support payments for his daughter

Nicole. Several factors complicate what would

otherwise be a fairly ordinary problem. First, it

is not the State of Illinois that is seeking

support payments from Mr. Behr; it is the State

of Kentucky, to which Mr. Behr’s ex-wife moved

the child without the knowledge or consent of

either Mr. Behr or any Illinois state court.

Second, Kentucky has criminalized "flagrant nonsupport" of a minor child living in Kentucky, and

is seeking Mr. Behr’s extradition for the purpose

of bringing charges against him under its law.

Third, the Governor of Illinois has issued a

warrant for Mr. Behr’s arrest and extradition,

pursuant to a request from the Governor of

Kentucky. 

 Thus, the narrow question before us in this

case is whether Mr. Behr is entitled to defeat

the pending extradition request on the ground

that, were he sent to Kentucky, the state courts

there would not be entitled to exercise personal

jurisdiction over him because he lacks

constitutionally sufficient contacts with the

state. We conclude that, in the context of

interstate criminal extradition, any defenses Mr.
Behr may have to the jurisdiction of the Kentucky

courts may be presented only to the Kentucky

courts. As the record reveals that the

extradition request is otherwise in order, we

affirm the judgment of the district court that

Mr. Behr is not entitled to be released from the

custody of the Sheriff of Kane County, who may

proceed to execute the extradition warrant.

I

 Jon and Valerie Behr were divorced in 1984 in

Illinois. They have a daughter, Nicole, who was

born on June 2, 1981. As part of the Judgment for

Dissolution of Marriage, entered by the Circuit

Court for the Twelfth Judicial Circuit, Kankakee

County, Illinois, Valerie was given full custody

of Nicole. Mr. Behr was ordered to pay child

support of $25 per week. In 1991, the child

support order was modified to increase Mr. Behr’s

payments to $234 per month.

 At some point thereafter, Valerie and Nicole

moved from Illinois to Kentucky. They did so

without seeking the permission of the Kankakee

court, which Valerie apparently should have

sought pursuant to 750 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/609

(West 2000). (Illinois cases hold that the

parties to a divorce decree awarding custody of

a child to one parent are entitled to have the

child kept within the jurisdiction. See, e.g.,

Martinec v. Sharapata, 66 N.E.2d 103, 105 (Ill.

App. 1946) (decree specified that custodial

parent was to stay in Illinois); Wade v. Wade,

102 N.E.2d 356, 360 (Ill. App. 1951) (even with

no provision in the divorce decree, it is against

the policy of Illinois to allow a custodial

parent to take a child out of the jurisdiction.

But even so, the custodial parent should not be

held in contempt for allowing the child to be

removed from the state without the knowledge or

permission of the noncustodial parent.)) Some

time later, Valerie complained to a Kentucky

court that Mr. Behr had failed to pay child

support for Nicole. The record does not reflect

how or when she made a demand for such payments

from him. There is, however, an undated document

labeled "Exhibit C" that is a handwritten note

from Valerie Behr to the Office of Monica J.

Bauer, Support Department [of the Circuit Court

of Kankakee County, as Exhibit B indicates],

referring to the docket number of the case and

notifying the court that her address had changed

to Murray, Kentucky. It is thus possible, though

we cannot tell (and it does not matter for our

disposition of this case), that Valerie

eventually told both the court and Mr. Behr about

her and Nicole’s whereabouts.

 On February 4, 1998, Mr. Behr was charged with
the criminal offense of flagrant non-support of

his minor daughter. The Governor of Kentucky

formally asked the Governor of Illinois to take

Mr. Behr into custody and extradite him to

Kentucky. See Ky. Rev. Stat. sec. 440.360 (BanksBaldwin 2000). The request was made under the

Uniform Criminal Extradition Act (UCEA), codified

in Illinois as 725 ILCS 225/1 et seq. (and in

Kentucky as K.R.S. sec. 440.150 et seq.). On July

27, 1998, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar issued a

warrant for Mr. Behr’s arrest, pursuant to the

UCEA, 725 ILCS 225/6. Mr. Behr was arrested and

taken into the custody of the Sheriff of Kane

County, Illinois. He remains in custody to this

day, despite the fact that Nicole is now over the

age of 18. We were told at oral argument that he

wears a monitoring device and has been allowed to

remain at home.

 Upon his arrest, Mr. Behr admitted that he has

not paid child support because, he says, he is

financially unable to do so. Nothing in the

record would permit us to assess the truth of

that representation, but it is not relevant in

any event. We are most concerned here with his

efforts to be released from the Kane County

Sheriff’s custody. He filed a writ of habeas

corpus under state law in the Circuit Court of

Kane County, Illinois, in November 1998. At the

hearing, the only issue the court addressed was

whether Mr. Behr was wanted in Kentucky. Finding

that he was, the court denied his petition for

release; Mr. Behr took no appeal from that

decision.

 Instead, he filed the present petition under 28

U.S.C. sec. 2241(c)(3) for federal habeas corpus

relief on December 24, 1998, alleging that he was

being held in state custody in violation of the

Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the

United States Constitution. (We do not know why

the state did not extradite him promptly after

the state court ruling.) The district court

examined the merits of his claims and on March

12, 2000, dismissed the petition. (Mr. Behr

requested a certificate of appealability, which

the district court denied, but no certificate of

appealability is required in proper sec. 2241

cases like this one, and so the denial does not

affect the scope of his appeal. See, e.g., Walker

v. O’Brien, 216 F.3d 626, 637-39 (7th Cir. 2000);

Lindstrom v. Graber, 203 F.3d 470, 473 (7th Cir.

2000).)

II

 The question Mr. Behr would like us to resolve

on this appeal is whether Kentucky has

jurisdiction to prosecute him criminally for nonsupport of his minor child. He urges us to find
that it does not, because he does not have any

contacts (minimum or otherwise) with the State of

Kentucky: he has never been there, he has never

done anything there (though we note that this is

part of the problem), and he did not even know

that Valerie had moved there with his daughter.

The district court first found that the UCEA is

constitutional, citing the Supreme Court’s

decision in New York v. O’Neill, 359 U.S. 1

(1959), and then ruled that the minimum contacts

test found in cases like International Shoe Co.

v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945), and Kulko v.

Superior Court, 436 U.S. 84 (1978), does not

apply to criminal cases. 

 In our view, this case must be approached

somewhat differently, though in the end we reach

the same result. The critical question is whether

the extradition warrant issued by the Governor of

Kentucky is valid. The governing analysis is the

one set forth in the Supreme Court’s decision in

Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S. 282 (1978), where the

Court had to decide whether the courts of an

asylum state (there Michigan) were empowered to

nullify an executive grant of extradition if the

demanding state failed to enunciate a factual

basis to show probable cause for the charges. The

Court found that interstate extradition "was

intended to be a summary and mandatory executive

proceeding," as derived from the language of Art.

IV, sec. 2, cl. 2 of the Constitution. 439 U.S.

at 288. The Extradition Clause and the UCEA

incorporate the general principles of comity and

full faith and credit that appear in Art. IV,

sec. 1. Id. at 287-88.

 In keeping in line with that intent, once the

governor of the asylum state has granted

extradition under the UCEA, the courts of that

state have only a limited role to play. As the

Supreme Court put it in Doran:

a court considering release on habeas corpus can

do no more than decide (a) whether the

extradition documents on their face are in order;

(b) whether the petitioner has been charged with

a crime in the demanding state; (c) whether the

petitioner is the person named in the request for

extradition; and (d) whether the petitioner is a

fugitive.

439 U.S. at 289. The Court concluded by holding

that the Michigan courts had no authority to

conduct an independent analysis of the probable

cause that underlay the charges in Arizona that

had given rise to the extradition request.

 In our case, the Illinois state court has

already reviewed the Doran factors and has found

that Mr. Behr is subject to extradition. There is
nothing in the record that suggests we should not

give our usual deference to its findings; our own

review of the extradition documents shows that

they are facially in order. Mr. Behr does not

challenge the fact that he has been charged with

a crime in Kentucky and that he is the person

named in the request; and he is, in the

specialized sense used in the UCEA, a "fugitive."

See Strachan v. Colon, 941 F.2d 128, 130-31 (2d

Cir. 1991) (all that is required is that the

defendant no longer be in the state in which he

committed the crime, regardless of knowledge of

guilt). We have ruled before that a district

court should not go beyond the Doran factors when

it rules on a habeas corpus petition like this

one, see Coungeris v. Sheahan, 11 F.3d 726 (7th

Cir. 1993), as has the Second Circuit, see

Strachan, 941 F.2d at 130.

 Mr. Behr urges that his jurisdictional

objections are somehow more fundamental than the

probable cause argument that the Court considered

in Doran, but we cannot agree. Both relate to

constitutional rights enjoyed by an accused

person, and we see no hierarchy of the sort Mr.

Behr proposes in the Constitution itself. He

concedes, as he must, that the courts of Kentucky

are fully equipped to consider any arguments he

may wish to present in the criminal prosecution,

including: (1) the claim that Kentucky is not

entitled to criminalize out-of-state behavior

that has effects within its borders, such as his

failure to support his daughter; (2) the claim

that his Fourteenth Amendment due process right

would be violated if he is hauled into a Kentucky

court, relying by analogy on the civil decision

in Kulko, supra; and, (3) the claim that his lack

of financial resources excuses him from

compliance. The proper, and indeed the only,

place to bring those claims is in the courts of

the demanding state. See Strachan, 941 F.2d at

132. 

 Anticipating this conclusion, Mr. Behr also

argues that it is unfair that his wife’s

unilateral act of moving with the child to

Kentucky should automatically expose him to

criminal prosecution there. What if, he asks

rhetorically, she had moved to Alaska? Or to

Guam? If, taking the case in its most favorable

light to him, he did not even know where Nicole

was, then how can he be convicted for willful or

flagrant non-support of her in the courts of a

strange state?

 These are two different points, to which we

respond briefly. First, the Extradition Clause of

the Constitution has the effect of diminishing

the significance of state lines for those accused

of a crime. It does not require (or even address)
extradition to foreign countries, which is

governed by specific bilateral treaties with each

individual nation. Any place to which Mr. Behr

could be extradited under the Constitution and

the UCEA would be a state or political entity

(such as Puerto Rico) that would be bound to

follow specific constitutional protections such

as the due process clauses. We do not doubt that

it would be inconvenient to be extradited to a

place like Alaska or Hawaii, but the fact is that

it is probably easier today to get from Kankakee

to Honolulu than it was to get from Savannah to

Boston at the time the Constitution was drafted.

The Framers of the Constitution drew this

balance, and they drew it, as the Supreme Court

put it in Doran, so as to avoid "balkanization"

and to avoid holding up judicial processes while

the asylum state conducted preliminary inquiries.

439 U.S. at 287-88. As for his second point, if

he truly had no knowledge of Nicole’s

whereabouts, we are confident that the courts of

Kentucky will be able to take that fact into

account in an appropriate way, whether as part of

their jurisdictional inquiry, their assessment of

the prosecution’s demonstration of scienter, or

otherwise.

III

 For these reasons, we Affirm the judgment of the

district court.