What in the World is Extradition?

by Barbara D'Amato



With all the extradition issues wound into the slaying of Dr. Cornbleet and the fleeing of Peterson to a French jurisdiction, I realized I didn’t know the first thing about extradition. So I consulted Wikispousia.com and came up with Anthony D’Amato, a professor of law at Northwestern University, who specializes in international law and jurisprudence, the philosophy of law. He was kind enough to give me an overview.

Anthony D’Amato:

Extradition is one of the oldest practices of states. The ancient Hittites entered into elaborate extradition treaties written on bronze tablets. (Every one of those tablets was subsequently melted down, but the clay molds were preserved—as if today someone threw out all the original letters but kept the carbon paper).

Crimes back then, as they still mostly are today, were territorial. If someone committed murder in state A and fled to state B, there would be no law in state B that applied to his act. Hence he would have a safe harbor. But say the king of state A wanted the murderer to be brought back and executed. Fortunately, the king of B had a mirror-image interest in bringing back fugitives who had committed their crimes in the territory of B. Thus the conditions were ripe for treaties. The king of A pledged to arrest and transport fugitives back to state B, and the king of B agreed to do the same thing regarding fugitives who committed their crimes in state A.

The fugitives who were wanted the most were the ones who had committed political crimes, such as assassinations of government officials. Extraditing those fugitives was a prime motivation for entering into extradition treaties. On the other side of the coin, states were reluctant to extradite their own citizens. Suppose a citizen of A enters into B, kills someone there, and then runs back to A. His family and friends would protest his being extradited to state B where he would probably be executed for murder. Moreover, they could claim that state B had trumped up evidence against the citizen of A.

Today, extradition treaties sometimes exempt nationals (citizens) from being extradited. The extradition treaty between the United States and France has a curious article. It provides that France has no obligation to extradite its own citizen to the United States to stand trial for a murder committed in the United States. It also provides that if France wants to extradite an American for a murder committed in France, the United States has the discretion either to extradite or not to extradite that person.

The history of political extradition in international law would not have been imagined by the most visionary Hittite. In the nineteenth century following the American and French revolutions, people began to realize that political crimes and offenses were often necessary to rid a country of despotic rulers. If a ‘freedom fighter’ who shot a government official in A fled to B, obviously the government of A would desperately want him back to be tried for treason. The fugitive asked the government of B for asylum. And various nations in B’s position for various reasons did grant asylum. In Latin America, where changes of government by assassination seemed to exceed (in the popular imagination) changes of government by election, a strong rule in favor of asylum developed where escaping revolutionaries were granted asylum almost as a matter of course.

The ‘political offense exception’ to extradition took root, and found itself spelled out in numerous extradition treaties. Ironically it was the United States and Great Britain in 2003 who retreated from the political offense exception. Great Britain had been furious that several American courts refused to approve extradition for alleged Irish terrorists who claimed their acts (including bombs) were politically motivated. The Supplemental Extradition Treaty of 2003 removed the political offense exception for acts involving violence or weapons.

And almost as an afterthought, the 2003 treaty also removed the nationality exception to extradition.

What about extradition of persons to tribunals in The Hague who are accused of committing war crimes or genocide? Since these are crimes under international law, and since international law applies everywhere, the particular law of the territory in which the crime took place is irrelevant. Hence the accused persons have no safe harbor. They are subject to what is called universal jurisdiction. Technically speaking they are not extradited to The Hague but rather are remitted there.

Barbara, Back again:

This is a thumbnail. All the books written on extradition laid end to end [don’t make jokes having to do with killing lawyers] would reach from here to Seahawks Stadium. Realizing this, Tony has said he would respond to questions on the subject.

Looking Through Some Photographs I Found Inside A Drawer

By Kevin Guilfoile


When I first wrote about the Cornbleet murder case it was largely because I couldn't figure out why no one had published a photo of the confessed killer. It certainly seemed relevant. It still does.

At the right is a recent photo of Hans Peterson, who savagely tortured and murdered Dr. David Cornbleet in his Michigan Avenue office last October, allegedly because Peterson believed a medicine Cornbleet had prescribed four years before had made him impotent. Although I'm not sure exactly when, I have reason to believe the picture was taken after Dr. Cornbleet's murder.

Less relevant but still interesting are these photos of the street and apartment where Peterson lived after he fled the US for St. Martin.



This morning a resolution was introduced in the Chicago City Council asserting that France's refusal to extradite Peterson "offends the notions of justice of this body and...the people of the City of Chicago." In response Mayor Daley has promised to raise the issue in an upcoming meeting with the mayor of Paris, Chicago's sister city.

I'm not sure that will have any impact at all, but as my good friend Lew Temple likes to say, good on them.

If all such efforts fail, the Sun-Times has a brief explanation of what Hans's French trial would be like.

And The Victim, Well He Won't Come Back

By Kevin Guilfoile

Perhaps you amateur detectives would like to know what really happened.

That's from a mysterious comment to my last post on the Cornbleet murder case. If you can excuse me on a lazy holiday weekend, I'm going to revisit the story.

Someone calling himself "Accutane Peterson" weighed in several times to defend confessed killer Hans Peterson (left in a high school photo) with some vehemence. In our thread this person identified himself as an anonymous member of the Peterson family, but Accutane Peterson has left similar comments in other news groups where he identifies himself as Hans Peterson's father. His long and sometimes rambling replies nevertheless give you the outlines of what will undoubtedly be Hans's defense if he ever goes to trial.

I also wrote about the story over at Radosh.net where I revealed some of what I've learned about Hans from various people close to the case. The discussion there has also been informative. If you would like clarification of some of the extradition issues that have been in the news, I encourage you to read through them.

And finally I'd like to point everyone once again to the online petition to have Peterson extradited back to the US. It's looking more and more like a futile effort, however, and, bizarre as it may seem, it appears Hans, who does not even speak French, will be tried as a French citizen in a French Caribbean court for a brutal murder he committed in the US against another American.

C'est la something or other.

Update: Jocelyn Cornbleet, Dr. Cornbleet's daughter, is scheduled to appear on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News program On the Record this Monday night at 9 PM Central.