Opinion ID: 739065
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Re-extradition Prohibition

Text: 119 Lui's case also presents a difficult question with respect to whether the United Kingdom's surrender of sovereignty over Hong Kong to China in July 1997 would effect an impermissible re-extradition with respect to Lui under the terms of Article XII. For the reasons that follow, I believe it would. 120 Article XII in relevant part provides that [a] person extradited [to a requesting Party] shall not ... be extradited by that Party to a third State. Here, upon reversion, the United Kingdom will surrender sovereignty and responsibility for the administration of justice in Hong Kong to China. In the event that Lui is extradited to Hong Kong prior to reversion, the record shows beyond question that he will be surrendered to the courts and judicial system of a third-party sovereign state for prosecution. The difficulty lies in determining whether reversion and Lui's surrender to the Chinese regime that will succeed the Crown Colony amounts to another extradition. 121 The plain meaning and derivations of the words extradite and extradition help lead me to conclude that the surrender contemplated for Lui would constitute another extradition. The dictionary definition of extradite is, To deliver up, as to another state or nation. Funk & Wagnalls New Comprehensive International Dictionary of the English Language 450 (1978). Extradition is alternatively defined in dictionaries as, The surrender of an accused person by a government to the justice of another government, or of a prisoner by one authority to another, id., as the surrender of an alleged fugitive from justice or criminal by one state, nation, or authority to another, The Random House Dictionary of the English Language 685 (2d ed.1987), and as, The surrender or delivery of an alleged criminal usu[ually] under the provisions of a treaty or statute by one country, state, or other power to another having jurisdiction to try the charge. Webster's Third International Dictionary 806 (1986). 6 122 Legal usage has followed the word's plain meaning. Black's Law Dictionary defines extradition by closely paraphrasing the formula given in Terlinden, wherein the Supreme Court defined [e]xtradition as the surrender by one nation to another of an individual accused or convicted of an offence outside its own territory, and within the territorial jurisdiction of the other, which, being competent to try and to punish him, demands the surrender. 184 U.S. at 289, 22 S.Ct. at 492 (emphasis added); Black's Law Dictionary 526 (5th ed.1979) (replacing the word nation with state or country). 123 International practice is consistent with this legal usage of the term. Prohibitions on re-extradition, like that found in Article XII, are fundamental features of many [extradition] treaties that are generally interpreted to give force to the broad principle of international law that a person extradited to one state may not be extradited or otherwise surrendered to a third state for prosecution. Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law § 477 cmt. d. 124 The operative plain meaning of the word, its legal usage, international practice, and its etymological derivation all indicate that the surrender which the record shows and the government concedes is contemplated for Lui would constitute another extradition. Upon reversion, the United Kingdom will surrender sovereignty to China as well as surrender jurisdiction over and custody of criminal defendants like Lui. Using the Terlinden definition, on the peculiar circumstances in this case, upon reversion: (1) Lui will be surrender[ed] by one nation to another; (2) he will be an individual accused ... of an offence outside [the extraditing authority's] own territory, because authority over that territory will pass from the United Kingdom to China; (3) the offenses for which Lui is accused will be within the territorial jurisdiction of the receiving authority, viz., China; and (4) the receiving authority, under Sino-British international agreements, specifically the Joint Declaration regarding reversion, will be competent to try and to punish him. 184 U.S. at 289, 22 S.Ct. at 492. 125 Having canvassed the relevant sources that help to illuminate the meaning of the word extradition, I believe that the revealed reality that the Crown Colony will surrender custody over Lui and jurisdiction over his criminal case to the Chinese successor regime contemplates another extradition in violation of Article XII of the US-UK bilateral extradition treaty. A decision of the Ninth Circuit, on which the panel opinion in the instant case relies, reaches a contrary result. See Oen Yin-Choy v. Robinson, 858 F.2d 1400, 1403-04 (9th Cir.1988). Starting from the premise that this case is not controlling in this court, this circuit should decline to follow this decision because I believe that its argument is neither thorough nor persuasive. Moreover, the Ninth Circuit was faced by a fact pattern quite unlike the heightened and unique circumstances present in Lui's case and thus was not required to squarely face the issue presented here. 126 In Oen, the United States Attorney, acting on behalf of the United Kingdom and the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, initiated extradition proceedings against Oen in April 1987, a full decade before the scheduled date of reversion. Id. at 1403. Oen was charged with false accounting and publishing a false statement, extraditable offenses under Article III of the US-UK extradition treaty. Id. at 1405. Oen argued that if he was extradited and convicted then the possibility existed that he would remain incarcerated beyond July 1, 1997, the date of reversion. He argued that this hypothetical scenario would have the effect of extraditing him to China in violation of Article XII of the treaty. Id. at 1403. 127 The Ninth Circuit disagreed and concluded that the Terlinden definition of extradition meant that [n]either deportation nor surrender other than in response to a demand pursuant to Treaty constitutes extradition. Id. at 1404. Having thus rephrased the Terlinden definition, the Ninth Circuit panel concluded that even if Oen becomes subject to Chinese authority pursuant to a reversion of sovereignty upon cession and termination of the British lease of Hong Kong, he will not have been extradited to China. Id. (emphasis added). 128 I find the Oen court's conclusion unsatisfactory for three reasons. First, as my previous discussion elaborates, it does not follow from either the commonly settled meaning of the word extradition or the term's operative legal usage, as manifested by the Supreme Court's definition in Terlinden. Instead it proceeds upon a rearticulated and truncated sense of the term that does not correspond to Terlinden and that cuts against international practice and the meaning that the term and its French and Latin cognates have carried since Roman antiquity. 129 Second, even on its own terms, the Oen court misapplied the meaning of the word extradition. Specifically, even if one accepts the Oen view that a surrender must be effectuated in response to a demand pursuant to treaty in order for it to constitute an extradition, then a Hong Kong relator's postreversion surrender would qualify. In view of the treaty architecture that surrounds the impending reversion and the provisions in the Joint Declaration that address the juridical and legal transfer of sovereignty, it is difficult to see how the Crown Colony will surrender custody over Lui and jurisdiction over his criminal case to the Chinese successor regime in the absence of the demands on his person qua criminal defendant that owe their legal status solely to treaty. See, e.g., Sino-British Joint Declaration, para. 1 (The Government of the People's Republic of China declares ... that it has decided to resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong with effect from 1 July 1997.). 7 130 Third, the factual pattern in Oen was radically dissimilar to the one that the court faces in this case. In Oen, the relator raised only a distant hypothetical possibility that he would remain incarcerated in Hong Kong prisons following reversion some ten or nine years later. No one doubted that Oen, upon extradition, would be tried and, if necessary, sentenced by courts of the British Crown Colony and imprisoned in Crown Colony gaols. 131 The Oen court thus did not address itself to the situation in this case, where it is certain as a practical matter and conceded by the government that the relator's trial would not be under the courts of the British Crown Colony. Therefore, the Oen decision did not fully address the issue that squarely confronts us today, whether Lui's surrender to Chinese authorities after reversion for trial will amount to another extradition. Read closely, Oen simply refuses to conclude that a previously convicted, already incarcerated prisoner is extradited upon reversion. This is not the predicament with Lui. I thus believe that Oen is unpersuasive and not on point.