Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said the law is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers principle by allowing the secretary of state to review legal decisions by judges.
The judge said the law also improperly allows the secretary of state to hide the true motives for extradition decisions - such as politics or foreign policy considerations - by blaming judges and the law when it suits the secretary's purposes.
``Under the present statute, the secretary may simply claim that his `hands were tied' because the law did not permit him to perform the requested extradition,'' the judge wrote in a 32-page opinion.
Lamberth said such ``buck-passing'' and ``finger-pointing'' by blaming judges is unacceptable. ``The public is entitled to hold the secretary of state accountable for his foreign policy decisions,'' he wrote. ``Because it permits the secretary to rely upon considerations which are not within his competence, the present extradition statute improperly shields the executive from public accountability.''
The ruling was made in a case involving two off-duty Chicago police officers accused of kidnapping by Canadian authorities. The two officers, Anthony Lobue, who has retired, and Thomas Kulekowskis, who has been suspended from the force, were accused of agreeing to help another man, Anthony DeSilva, bring his mentally and physically impaired wife, Tammy, back to the United States to prepare for a lawsuit they had filed. The officers, and others, went to Winnipeg to get her. Canadian authorities, however, stopped them at the border and refused to allow them to take her to the United States after her parents alleged that she had been kidnapped.
Attorney Gregory B. Craig, who represents the officers, said Lamberth saw the ``injustice'' of the U.S. government's decision to extradite the two men, who were ``caught up'' in a personal dispute between Tammy DeSilva's parents and her husband.
Craig said Lobue and Kulekowskis are elated because Lamberth's ruling also forbids the United States from extraditing them to Canada, as the State Department wanted to do.
John Russell, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the solicitor general will decide whether to appeal and whether to seek a stay of the judge's ruling in the interim.
Justice Department lawyers had argued that the extradition law had withstood the test of time and should remain intact. But Lamberth disagreed. ``The short answer is that a statute which offends separation of powers by permitting the executive [branch] to review the decisions of the judiciary is unconstitutional, period,'' the judge wrote.
by CNB