Opinion ID: 775224
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Factual Basis of the Claim

Text: 10 Sometime in June 1999, approximately one year after his extradition to the United States, Emuegbunem complained to the district court that prosecutors had not honored his rights under the Vienna Convention. At a hearing on June 8, 1999, the district court allowed the parties additional time to research the matter. Treating Defendant's complaint as a motion for the assistance of Nigerian consular officials, at a hearing on June 18, 1999, the district court directed the prosecutor to contact the Nigerian consulate. Subsequently, both the prosecutor and Emuegbunem did so. The prosecutor sent a letter informing the Nigerian consulate of the crime with which Emuegbunem had been charged, the location at which he was being held, and the name and address of his attorney. For his part, Defendant sought the assistance of Nigerian officials in procuring witnesses and physical evidence from Nigeria. In a letter dated August 13, 1999, the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, D.C., sent Defendant the following letter: 11 I am directed to ackwoledge [sic] the receipt of your letter and other relevant attached documents regarding your case # 98-CR-80299-DT. However, we have not been informed nor have it in our record as a notice of your arrest not until you called and left a message in the voice mail. Also the request for your witnesses who resides [sic] in Nigeria to be at your trial is untimely given the fact your witnesses if contacted would require at least two months to seek and obtain travel documents which include US visa, this is because of their new rule now. 12 Can we now look forward to the August 31st 1999 for the trial and see what is coming out and then we can go from there. My senior officer (A.A. Musa) is not in the country right now. He is to initiate the approval for our coming to be at the trial which I cannot guarantee if we will be coming or not, but at any case we wish you the best. 13 Upon receipt of the letter, Emuegbunem filed a motion to dismiss the indictment pursuant to the Vienna Convention and claimed prejudice from the denial of earlier contact with Nigerian diplomatic representatives. 14 Emuegbunem's claim of prejudice arises from the defense he wanted to make at trial. Under the defense theory of the case, Emuegbunem, an executive with a Nigerian telecommunications company named Intramedia Ltd., attended a trade conference held in Toronto from February 10 to 15, 1997. According to affidavits appended to Defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment, two Nigerian witnesses Emuegbunem wished to present at trial would have testified that on February 5, 1997, Defendant purchased $9,500 worth of American currency before leaving Nigeria for Toronto. At trial Emuegbunem suggested that his arrest stemmed from a case of mistaken identity because an unknown individual named Chuck, most likely Acadak who was also known as Oochie and used approximately twenty aliases, sold the heroin to Player. During pretrial proceedings, defense counsel disclosed this theory of the case to the district court. In his motion to dismiss the indictment, Defendant represented that he wished to call a third Nigerian witness to support this version of events by testifying that an individual named Uche Odinaka Chuck had supplied Player with the heroin. Defendant explained that the documents found on his person and in his hotel room that appeared to corroborate Player's story related to a transaction he was attempting to negotiate at the trade conference. 15 At a hearing on the morning of trial, the district court denied Defendant's motion. Recognizing that the Vienna Convention protects the ability of consular officials to perform their diplomatic functions, the district court posited that allowing a defendant to contact the representatives of his nation constituted the only remedy judicially available for a violation of the treaty. For this reason, the court declined to dismiss the indictment. Although the court conceded that Emuegbunem might suffer some prejudice from not being afforded the opportunity to call the Nigerian witnesses at his trial, it treated the documentary evidence of the currency exchange in Nigeria as mitigating the absence of the oral testimony of the two Nigerian affiants. As for Defendant's claim that there was a third witness who would identify Oochie or Uche as the Chuck who supplied Player with heroin, the court found no connection between lack of notice to Nigerian diplomats under the Vienna Convention and Defendant's inability to obtain the testimony of this witness. In sum, the court found insufficient prejudice to warrant dismissal of the indictment. 16 Nonetheless, the district court offered to delay the trial to enable Emuegbunem to obtain witnesses and evidence from Nigeria. Recognizing that Defendant had throughout the pre-trial proceedings insisted upon his rights under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161, the court advised him that this delay would toll the running of the seventy-day period after indictment within which a criminal trial must occur under the Speedy Trial Act. Defendant elected to proceed to trial without the witnesses, and the trial began that day.