Double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. A variation in common law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict. These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis in idem.
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to claim criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where the alleged crime was committed, and regardless of the accused's nationality, country of residence, or any other relation to the prosecuting entity. Crimes prosecuted under universal jurisdiction are considered crimes against all, too serious to tolerate jurisdictional arbitrage.
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdictions and depends on the arrangements made between them. In addition to legal aspects of the process, extradition also involves the physical transfer of custody of the person being extradited to the legal authority of the requesting jurisdiction.
The Alien Tort Statute, also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section in the United States Code that gives federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits filed by foreign nationals for torts committed in violation of international law. It was first introduced by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and is one of the oldest federal laws still in effect in the U.S.
In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be considered an example of a prophylactic rule formulated by the judiciary in order to protect a constitutional right. The exclusionary rule may also, in some circumstances at least, be considered to follow directly from the constitutional language, such as the Fifth Amendment's command that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" and that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, was a landmark case in United States and international law. It set the precedent for United States federal courts to punish non-American citizens for tortious acts committed outside the United States that were in violation of public international law or any treaties to which the United States is a party. It thus extends the jurisdiction of United States courts to tortious acts committed around the world. The case was decided by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit consisting of judges Wilfred Feinberg, Irving Kaufman, and Amalya Lyle Kearse.
Self-help, in the sense of a legal doctrine, refers to individuals' implementation of their rights without resorting to legal writ or consultation of higher authority, as where a financial institution repossesses a car on which they hold both the title and a defaulted note. Individuals resort to self-help when they retrieve property found under the unauthorized control of another person, or simply abate nuisances. A self-help eviction refers to a commercial landlord's common law right to use self-help to reenter his or her property peaceably in order to evict a defaulting tenant or other person with no right of possession.
In law, rendition is a "surrender" or "handing over" of persons or property, particularly from one jurisdiction to another. For criminal suspects, extradition is the most common type of rendition. Rendition can also be seen as the act of handing over, after the request for extradition has taken place.
The Ker–Frisbie doctrine is applied in the context of extradition and generally holds that criminal defendants may be prosecuted in United States courts regardless of whether their presence has been obtained through the use of applicable extradition treaties.
Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436 (1886), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that a fugitive kidnapped from abroad could not claim any violation of the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.
Male captus, bene detentus is a legal doctrine, according to which the fact that a person may have been wrongly or unfairly arrested, will not prejudice a rightful detention or trial under due process.
Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Alien Tort Statute and the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Edward Rafeedie was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519 (1952), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that kidnapping of suspects by State authorities is constitutional if done so to take the suspect from one jurisdiction to another for criminal trial. The defendant was tried in Michigan after being abducted by Michigan authorities in Chicago, Illinois. The case was related to the previous case of Ker v. Illinois (1886). Both cases together created the Ker–Frisbie doctrine, which is used to validate the reasoning behind seemingly illegal and unconstitutional extradition and abduction from other countries or from state to state on the basis of a prosecution being brought against the individual.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
Humberto Álvarez Machaín is a Mexican physician from Guadalajara, Mexico, who was accused of aiding the torture and killing of the American Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Enrique Camarena Salazar, in February 1985. He was acquitted of the charges. Álvarez is a resident and citizen of Mexico.
Machaín or Machain is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Mexico is amongst the world's most popular sources and destinations for international child abduction while also being widely regarded as having one of the least effective systems of protecting and returning internationally abducted children within its borders.
Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar was an American intelligence officer for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In February 1985 Camarena was kidnapped by drug traffickers hired by Mexican politicians in Guadalajara, Mexico. He was interrogated under torture and murdered. Three leaders of the Guadalajara drug cartel were eventually convicted in Mexico for Camarena's murder. The U.S. investigation into Camarena's murder led to ten more trials in Los Angeles for other Mexican nationals involved in the crime. The case continues to trouble U.S.–Mexican relations, most recently when one of the three convicted traffickers, Rafael Caro Quintero, was released from a Mexican prison in 2013.
Sidney L. Jaffe is a U.S.-born Canadian businessman who was kidnapped from outside his Toronto home in 1981 by American bounty hunters Timm Johnsen and Daniel Kear and transported to Florida after failing to appear for a trial there on charges of land sales fraud. His conviction on the fraud charges was overturned on appeal; his conviction on an additional charge of failure to appear for trial was upheld, but he was paroled after two years and returned to Canada. At the request of the Canadian government, Jaffe declined to appear at a new Florida trial on further land fraud charges in 1985. Johnsen and Kear were extradited to Canada and convicted of kidnapping in 1986, but were set free pending appeal, and their sentences were reduced to time served in 1989, after which they returned to the United States. The Jaffe incident caused significant tensions in Canada–United States relations, and resulted in a 1988 exchange of letters between the two countries on cross-border kidnappings.
