Opinion ID: 1972334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Extradition to Florida

Text: The state first argued that the extradition clause of the United States Constitution, Art. IV, sec. 2, cl. 2, mandated that the state surrender defendant to Florida authorities. We find it unnecessary to determine at this point whether the extradition clause required the state to respond immediately to Florida's request because Rhode Island's Uniform Criminal Extradition Act is dispositive of the issue. In particular, G.L. 1956 (1981 Reenactment) § 12-9-3 delineates the duty of the Governor of Rhode Island to deliver fugitives from justice and directs the Governor to have arrested and delivered up to the executive authority of any other state    any person charged in that state with [a] crime, who has fled from justice and is found in this state. The Governor's authority is further defined by § 12-9-22 of the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act that provides, If a criminal prosecution has been instituted against such person under the laws of this state and is still pending, the governor, in his discretion, either may surrender him on demand of the executive authority of another state or hold him until he has been tried and discharged or convicted and punished in this state. Read together, these statutes clearly grant to the Governor of Rhode Island discretion either to hold and to prosecute a person in this state while that person remains a fugitive from justice in another or to deliver the fugitive to the other state. Whereas the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act does make the Governor's duty to deliver a fugitive mandatory, it also grants the Governor discretion to hold and to try the fugitive in Rhode Island. Because these two alternatives are not mutually exclusive, the trial justice in the instant case did not err in finding that defendant need not have been immediately returned to Florida but could have first been tried on the charges lodged against him in Rhode Island.