Opinion ID: 579987
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pre-Extradition Detention: February 2-March 27

Text: 14 The district court also agreed with the defendants that their nearly eight-week detention of Sivard could not be wrongful because they detained him pursuant to the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act. 5 It is possible that such a lengthy detention, unjustified by Sivard's arrest for battery, might have been justified if carried out in response to a request from Massachusetts for Sivard's extradition. It is undisputed that Massachusetts had indicted Sivard two months before his arrest in Indiana, and that Massachusetts issued an arrest warrant for Sivard one month after his arrest in Indiana. What remains unknown is when Pulaski County and its officials learned of the charges against Sivard in Massachusetts. A detention while awaiting extradition cannot be justified as such until the detaining state is aware of the other state's desire to try the detainee for another crime. If the defendants explain, and defend, their lengthy detention of Sivard as pre-extradition detention, they must show that they actually held him with the knowledge that he was wanted in another state. They have not done this. 15 The trial court erred in its declaration that upon his arrest a search in the national criminal records computer showed that Mr. Sivard was wanted in Massachusetts for various felony charges.... (emphasis added). There is no evidence in the record to suggest that Indiana officials became aware of Sivard's Massachusetts indictment at the same time they arrested him. The defendants themselves were unable to make this argument in their motion for summary judgment. In separate paragraphs their motion states that, first, immediately following the arrest a computer search was begun, and second, (without suggesting when, or how, this happened), that the department determined that Sivard was wanted in Massachusetts. The lack of temporal or causal relation between these two paragraphs strikes us as deliberate. The defendants were apparently avoiding, while hinting at, the very contention for which the district court gave them credit. 16 We note further that the district court's reliance on Indiana law to support such a long pre-extradition detention may be misplaced. The court noted that the Indiana Supreme Court, in Meek v. State, 6 held that a one-month detention before an extradition hearing is acceptable. The Meek case did not so hold. It stated only that it found no authority stating that a detainee held under the Extradition Act suffered a constitutional violation if his extradition hearing was held one month after his arrest. The district court also cited two other cases for the proposition that a failure to follow strictly the procedural requirements of the Extradition Act would not constitute a denial of due process. 7 Given the facts before us, these cases are equally inapplicable, and do not support a summary dismissal of Sivard's claims. The officials who detained Sivard have not explained at what point they detained him pursuant to the extradition request of Massachusetts; we cannot say when the procedural requirements of the Extradition Act would begin to apply. A county police force cannot use retrospectively its later knowledge of a request for extradition to justify an otherwise unconstitutional detention. From the facts before us, we cannot say that the county had such knowledge until the defendant had spent at least a month in jail. 17