Ker v. Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 27, 1886
Decided December 6, 1886
Full case nameFrederick Ker v. People of the State of Illinois
Citations119 U.S. 436 (more)
7 S. Ct. 225; 30 L. Ed. 421; 1886 U.S. LEXIS 2007
Case history
PriorWrit of Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois
Holding
There is no language in the 1870 Treaty of Extradition between the U.S. and Peru, which says in terms that a party fleeing from the U.S. to escape punishment for crime becomes thereby entitled to an asylum in the country to which Ker has fled.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Morrison Waite
Associate Justices
Samuel F. Miller · Stephen J. Field
Joseph P. Bradley · John M. Harlan
William B. Woods · Stanley Matthews
Horace Gray · Samuel Blatchford
Case opinion
MajorityMiller, joined by unanimous

Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436 (1886),[1] 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.

The incident that led to this decision involved a Pinkerton Detective Agency agent, Henry Julian, was hired by the federal government to collect a larcenist, Frederick Ker, who had fled to Peru. Although Julian had the necessary extradition papers—the two governments had negotiated an extradition treaty a decade earlier—he found that there was no official to meet his request due to the recent Chilean military occupation of Lima. Rather than return home empty-handed, Julian kidnapped the fugitive, with assistance from Chilean forces, and placed him on a U.S. vessel heading back to the United States.

A very important provision in all these US Supreme Court rulings on international extradition is that the extradited defendant must be tried by an impartial jury, according to the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution.

See also

Further reading

  • Fairman, Charles (1953). "Ker v. Illinois Revisited". American Journal of International Law. 47 (4): 678–686. doi:10.2307/2194916. JSTOR 2194916. S2CID 246007113.
  • Preuss, Lawrence (1935). "Kidnaping of Fugitives from Justice on Foreign Territory". American Journal of International Law. 29 (3): 502–507. doi:10.1017/S0002930000168587. JSTOR 2190429. S2CID 151551091.

References

  1. ↑ Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436 (1886)


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