People v. Martin

567 N.E.2d 1097, 208 Ill. App. 3d 857, 153 Ill. Dec. 870, 1991 Ill. App. LEXIS 201
Appellate Court of Illinois·Decided February 13, 1991·No. 2-89-0095·Published·Cited by 12 cases

Opinion

JUSTICE NICKELS

delivered the opinion of the court:

Defendant, David C. Martin, appeals a judgment of the circuit court denying his petition for habeas corpus in a proceeding to extradite him to Wisconsin. Defendant’s sole argument on appeal is that fundamental fairness bars the State of Wisconsin from obtaining defendant’s extradition six years after Wisconsin had instituted the first of three such proceedings. We disagree. We affirm the trial court.

On February 18, 1977, defendant escaped from a minimum security correctional facility in Oregon, Wisconsin, and fled shortly thereafter to Florida. Defendant lived in Florida, using the alias David Cleveland, until 1980 or 1981, when he moved to Rockford, Illinois, where his family lived. He lived in Rockford and was not physically outside of Illinois since that time.

In February 1982, defendant was arrested in Illinois on a burglary charge, and the Wisconsin prison from which defendant had escaped advised the sheriff’s department that defendant was a fugitive and requested that authorities in Wisconsin be notified should defendant become available for extradition. Defendant pleaded guilty to the burglary charge in Illinois and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment beginning on July 26, 1982, and the fugitive information was dismissed. Defendant was released on parole after two years but was returned to prison for a parole violation.

In July 1986, defendant was again sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Illinois based on his guilty plea to a charge of retail theft. A fugitive information based on the Wisconsin escape was once again dismissed as part of a plea agreement. Defendant was paroled in July 1987 and was discharged from parole in July 1988.

In January 1988, the State of Illinois obtained leave to file a “fugitive information” against defendant, and the Governor of Wisconsin made a formal demand of the Governor of Illinois for the return of defendant. On February 22, 1988, a governor’s warrant for defendant’s arrest was issued.

In September 1988, after a series of continuances not in issue here, defendant filed a petition for habeas corpus. The petition alleged that the 1982 and 1986 dismissal of the fugitive warrants without request for or issuance of governor’s warrants and the knowledge of Wisconsin officials of defendant’s location throughout that time until 1988 contravened “fundamental fairness” and barred defendant’s extradition to Wisconsin 14 years after the commission of the offense charged.

The circuit court conducted a hearing on defendant’s petition, taking judicial notice of the prior fugitive proceedings against defendant and of the prior unrelated Illinois criminal proceedings involving defendant. Defendant argued that under People ex rel. Bowman v. Woods (1970), 46 Ill. 2d 572, “fundamental fairness” required the court to find that Wisconsin had forfeited its right to extradite defendant by its delay in seeking extradition from 1982 to 1988. The trial judge rejected this argument, concluding that Bowman involved extraordinary circumstances not present in this case. The trial judge noted specifically that in the approximately six years between Wisconsin’s first expression of interest in extraditing defendant and the issuance of the governor’s warrant in the present case, defendant was sentenced to prison in Illinois on three separate occasions and stated that “of those six years, defendant has spent probably five in the Illinois State Penitentiary.” The court denied the petition for habeas corpus, and defendant brought this appeal.

Extradition is a summary and mandatory proceeding for the apprehension and return of fugitives from justice. (Michigan v. Doran (1978), 439 U.S. 282, 288, 58 L. Ed. 2d 521, 527, 99 S. Ct. 530, 535; People ex rel. Millet v. Babb (1953), 1 Ill. 2d 191, 195.) Extradition is governed by article IV, section 2, of the United States Constitution and by Federal legislation (18 U.S.C.A. §3182 et seq. (Supp. III 1985)). State courts are bound by article IV, section 2, and it is settled that, although States may supplement Federal regulation, they may not impose more stringent requirements for extradition than those existing under Federal law. Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987), 483 U.S. 219, 227, 97 L. Ed. 2d 187, 195, 107 S. Ct. 2802, 2808; California v. Superior Court of California (1987), 482 U.S. 400, 405-06, 96 L. Ed. 2d 332, 339, 107 S. Ct. 2433, 2437; People ex rel. Hernandez v. Elrod (1981), 86 Ill. 2d 453, 456.

Extradition of fugitives from justice is an absolute right of the demanding State. (People v. Boswell (1986), 148 Ill. App. 3d 915, 917.) The Supreme Court has held that in a habeas corpus proceeding to challenge extradition, the court of the asylum State may consider only (1) whether the extradition documents on their face are in order; (2) whether the petitioner has been charged with a crime in the demanding State; (3) whether the petitioner is the person named in the request for extradition; and (4) whether the petitioner is a fugitive. California, 482 U.S. at 408, 96 L. Ed. 2d at 341, 107 S. Ct. at 2438-39; Doran, 439 U.S. at 289, 58 L. Ed. 2d at 527, 99 S. Ct. at 535.

Defendant concedes that all four of these requirements have been met. He contends, however, that the Illinois Supreme Court in People ex rel. Bowman v. Woods (1970), 46 Ill. 2d 572, imposed a fifth requirement that was not met in this case, namely, that the demanding State not have forfeited its right to extradition by its “inordinate delay” in enforcing that right.

In Bowman, the petitioner was originally sentenced in 1951 to 10 years and 10 days’ imprisonment in Alabama for the theft of 10 cows. After serving slightly more than a year of his sentence, he escaped from the Alabama prison and fled to Illinois. Alabama commenced extradition proceedings against him in 1955 and 1957, but each time Alabama took no conclusive action and the petitioner was eventually released. In May 1968, the petitioner was arrested pursuant to a governor’s warrant, and his petition for habeas corpus was denied. The Hlinois Supreme Court reversed. It noted that the scope of a habeas corpus hearing is normally limited to the four issues we have listed, but stated that “because there was an inordinate delay not attributable to the petitioner, closer scrutiny is required.” (46 Ill. 2d at 575.) The court then explained:

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People v. Martin, 567 N.E.2d 1097, 208 Ill. App. 3d 857, 153 Ill. Dec. 870, 1991 Ill. App. LEXIS 201 (Ill. Ct. App. 1991).

567 N.E.2d 1097 (People v. Martin) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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