Puerto Rico v. Branstad
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| Puerto Rico v. Branstad | ||||||||||||
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| Argued March 30, 1987 Decided June 23, 1987 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||||
| Federal Courts have the power to enforce extraditions based on the Extradition Clause. | ||||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: William Rehnquist Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Jr., Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia |
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| Case opinions | ||||||||||||
| Majority by: Marshall Joined by: Rehnquist, Brennan, White, Blackmun, Stevens; Powell, O'Connor (parts I, II-A, II-C, III); Scalia (part) Concurrence by: O'Connor Joined by: Powell Concurrence by: Scalia |
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| Laws applied | ||||||||||||
| Extradition Clause of the United States Constitution, Extradition Act, | ||||||||||||
Puerto Rico v. Branstad, 483 U.S. 219 (1987), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled unanimously that Federal Courts have the power to enforce extraditions based on the Extradition Clause of Article Four of the United States Constitution. The decision overruled a prior decision in Kentucky v. Dennison, 24 How. 66 (1861), which had rendered federal courts powerless to order Governors of the different States to fulfill their obligations under the Extradition Clause.
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[edit] History
[edit] Prior law
The Constitution of the United States contains in its Article IV, Section 2, a clause that reads:
- A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
Congress also legislated the Extradition Act, , which effectively read the same as the Extradition Clause only that it also included Territories, Districts and States.
In Kentucky v. Dennison (1861), during the Civil War, the Supreme Court held that the federal courts may not, through the issue of writs of mandamus, compel state Governors to surrender fugitives.
[edit] Puerto Rico's request
In 1981, Iowa native Ronald Calder struck a married couple with his automobile near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The husband survived the attack but the wife, who was eight months pregnant, did not. Witnesses testified that Calder, after striking the couple, backed his car two or three times over the victim's body.
Following these events Calder was arrested and charged with first degree homicide by Puerto Rican authorities and was released after paying a $5,000 bail. However, Calder did not appear at two preliminary hearings that were scheduled in the Puerto Rico District Courts, at which time, he was declared a fugitive of justice. Puerto Rican authorities notified the police authorities in Iowa, having suspicions that he might have fled to his home-state. On April 1981, Calder was surrendered to the police near Park County, Iowa but was released after posting a $20,000 bail set by a District Court Magistrate.
In May 1981, Governor of Puerto Rico Carlos Romero Barceló submitted to the Governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad, a request for extradition. The request for extradition was denied by Branstad, saying that "a white American man . . . could not receive a fair trial in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico." After Governor Romero Barceló again requested extradition, Governor Branstad asked that the charges against Calder be reduced. Governor Romero Barceló denied this petition, causing Governor Branstad to once again deny extradition.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa that would order Governor Branstad to proceed with the extradition of Ronald Calder. Governor Brandstad conteded that the Extradition Clause did not apply to Puerto Rico because the Island was not a State of the United States. Furthermore, he claimed Puerto Rico could not invoke the Extradition Act because the Federal Court, under Kentucky v. Dennison, did not have power to order Governors to follow the Extradition Clause or Act. The District Court agreed and dismissed the case. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
[edit] Supreme Court decision
Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court which concluded that the precedent established by Kentucky v. Dennison "is the product of another time. The conception of the relation between the States and the Federal Government there announced is fundamentally incompatible with more than a century of constitutional development." It established that Federal Courts do have the power to enforce both the Extradition Clause and the Extradition Act through writs of mandamus.
One argument that arose during the oral argument session was whether the Extradition Clause applied to Puerto Rico, since it is not a State of the Union. Although Justice Marshall, joined by five of his brethren, analyzed Puerto Rico's current political condition as one that gives Puerto Rico certain rights comparable to those of the fifty states, in the end, he applied the Extradition Act, which clearly includes the territories of the United States. Justice O'Connor makes note of this fact in her concurrence and did not join the opinion of the Court regarding Puerto Rico's status. Justice Scalia also did not join that part, and also brought up the point that "no party before us has asserted the lack of power of Congress to require extradition from a State to a Territory."
The decision effectively overruled Kentucky v. Dennison and reversed the judgments of the Eighth Circuit and the Southern District of Iowa Federal Courts.
