Opinion ID: 184453
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sequential Prosecution

Text: 21 We begin with Rezaq's argument that it was impermissible for the United States to try him a second time, as he had already been tried in Malta. Rezaq cannot base this argument on the Constitution's Double Jeopardy Clause, for two reasons. First, that clause does not prohibit sequential trials by different sovereigns. See United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 317, 98 S.Ct. 1079, 1082-83, 55 L.Ed.2d 303 (1978) (sequential prosecution in Indian tribal court and in federal court is not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause); United States v. Richardson, 580 F.2d 946, 947 (9th Cir.1978) (per curiam) (applying this holding to sequential prosecutions in Guatemalan and United States courts). Second, Rezaq was prosecuted in Malta for murder, attempted murder, and hostage-taking, but the United States prosecution was for air piracy. The offense of air piracy contains elements--related to the control of an airplane--that the crimes for which Rezaq was tried in Malta do not. This means, under the usual double jeopardy analysis, that the first prosecution does not bar the second. See United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 696, 703-12, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 2859-64, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993); see also United States v. Rezaq, 899 F.Supp. 697, 703-04 (D.D.C.1995) (conducting a detailed comparison of the elements of air piracy with those of the Maltese offenses). 22 Rezaq asserts, however, that this case is subject to a more exacting standard than the traditional double-jeopardy one. Section 1472(n), 49 U.S.C. app. § 1472(n) (1994), was enacted to implement the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (also called the Hague Convention), Dec. 16, 1970, 22 U.S.T. 1643, a multilateral treaty directed at preventing and punishing air piracy. See United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086, 1092 (D.C.Cir.1991). Rezaq claims that both the Hague Convention and section 1472(n) incorporate a special ban on sequential prosecution that is more restrictive than the Double Jeopardy Clause, and argues that his prosecution on air piracy charges violates that ban. 23 It is certainly possible that a treaty could contain a double jeopardy provision more restrictive--that is, barring more prosecutions--than the Constitution's Double Jeopardy Clause. In Sindona v. Grant, 619 F.2d 167, 178 (2d Cir.1980), for instance, the court so read a double jeopardy provision in an extradition treaty with Italy. See also United States v. Jurado-Rodriguez, 907 F.Supp. 568, 577 (E.D.N.Y.1995). But Rezaq has not shown that the Hague Convention falls in this category. 1 24 Rezaq points to the provisions of the Hague Convention that require states to either extradite or prosecute offenders, and argues that they imply that a more restrictive double jeopardy rule applies. For instance, he cites Article 4(2), which provides: Each Contracting State shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offence in the case where the alleged offender is present in its territory and it does not extradite him pursuant to Article 8.... Rezaq argues that this provision implies that extradition and prosecution are mutually exclusive options: a Contracting Party may not both extradite an offender and prosecute him. This rule, he asserts, in turn implies that the Hague Convention intended to bar all sequential prosecutions, whether they occur after extradition or not. 25 The first step in Rezaq's argument is flawed: the Hague Convention's requirement that a state either prosecute offenders or extradite them does not imply a bar on (at different times) doing both. In general, a requirement to do A or B does not necessarily imply a bar on doing both A and B; one must look at the context and the purpose of the requirement to decide whether such a bar is meant. For example, if a religious organization requires that its members either do volunteer work or make cash contributions to charity, the organization clearly does not mean to foreclose them from doing both. The purpose of this hypothetical religious mandate is to ensure that believers try to do good deeds, and this purpose is served if a believer chooses to both do volunteer work and make charitable contributions. Cf. Foutz v. United States, 72 F.3d 802, 805 (10th Cir.1995) (concluding, based on context, that a set of alternatives in a tax statute should not be read to be mutually exclusive); Phillip M. Kannan, Symbolic Logic in Judicial Interpretation, 27 U. MEM. L.REV. 85, 94 (1996). 26 Here, the context makes clear that the statute's injunction to extradite or prosecute is not meant to state mutually exclusive alternatives. The extradite-or-prosecute requirement is intended to ensure that states make some effort to bring hijackers to justice, either through prosecution or extradition. There is no indication that Article 4 is intended to go beyond setting a minimum, and limit the options of states; indeed, Article 4(3) specifically provides that [t]his Convention does not exclude any jurisdiction exercised in accordance with national law. A reading of Article 4 that focuses on bringing hijackers to justice is also consistent with the Convention's (short) preamble, one clause of which states that for the purpose of deterring [acts of air piracy], there is an urgent need to provide appropriate measures for punishment of offenders. Thus, the extradite-or-prosecute requirement is like the hypothetical donate-or-volunteer requirement described above; it is intended to ensure a minimum level of effort, and does not necessarily preclude the recipient of the mandate from doing more. 27 A reading under which the options of prosecution and extradition are mutually exclusive could also undermine the Convention's goal of ensuring punishment of offenders. For instance, if a person is extradited from state A to state B, and B then discovers that a technical obstacle prevents it from prosecuting her, B should be able to return her to A for prosecution; any other reading of the treaty might allow a suspect to escape prosecution altogether. Or, to choose an example closer to the facts of this case, if state A tries and convicts a defendant for certain crimes associated with a hijacking (as Malta tried Rezaq for murder, attempted murder, and hostage-taking), there is no indication that A is barred from then extraditing her to B once she has served her sentence, so that B may try the defendant for different crimes associated with the same hijacking (as the United States tried Rezaq for air piracy). 2 28 The travaux preparatoires for the Hague Convention reinforce our conclusion that the treaty does not incorporate a special bar on sequential prosecution. They show that the treaty's negotiators considered and rejected the possibility of expressly barring sequential prosecutions through a ne bis in idem provision (a term for double-jeopardy provisions in international instruments; another term is non bis in idem). The states opposed to this idea, whose views carried the day, argued that the principle was not applied in exactly the same manner in all States, and that [i]n taking a decision whether to prosecute, and, similarly, a decision whether to extradite, the State concerned will, in each case, apply its own rule on the subject of ne bis in idem. INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION, LEGAL COMMITTEE, 17th Sess., Doc. 8877-LC/161, at 8 (1970). This is, of course, exactly what the United States has done in applying its own double jeopardy rules. 29 Nor is there any indication that Congress, in enacting section 1472(n), read the Hague Convention differently, or intended to subject prosecutions under section 1472(n) to a heightened double jeopardy standard. The text and legislative history of section 1472(n) are both devoid of evidence pointing to such a conclusion. In the absence of any sign that either section 1472(n) or the Hague Convention undertook to impose a more stringent than usual double-jeopardy rule, we conclude that Rezaq's prosecution in Malta was not an obstacle to his subsequent prosecution, in this proceeding, on air piracy charges.