AELE LAW LIBRARY OF CASE SUMMARIES:
Corrections Law for Jails, Prisons and
Detention Facilities
Foreign Prisoners
The U.S. Supreme
Court in Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, 2008 U.S. Lexis 4887, ruled that
aliens detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as enemy combatants after their
capture in Afghanistan or elsewhere overseas are constitutionally entitled
to pursue claims for habeas corpus, and found that the procedures provided
in a 2005 statute for review of the detainees' status are inadequate and
constitute an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
In another case, Munaf v. Geren, No. 06-1666, 2008 U.S. Lexis 4888, decided
the same day, June 12, 2008, the Court ruled that the habeas corpus statute
applies to U.S. citizens held overseas by U.S. military forces, such as
in Iraq, even if those forces are operating as a component of an multinational
coalition. The U.S. citizens being detained had traveled voluntarily to
Iraq and are alleged to have committed crimes there. The Court further
ruled, however, that the particular plaintiffs in that case were not entitled
to relief to enjoin the U.S. from transferring them to the custody of Iraqi
authorities for criminal prosecution.
In a case (Avena
and Other Mexican Nationals) involving 51 Mexican nationals confined in
U.S. prisons, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the U.S.
had violated Article 36(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
by failing to provide them with notice of their rights to contact the Mexican
consulate after they were taken into custody. The ICJ, therefore, held
that each of these individuals were entitled to review and reconsideration
of the U.S. state court convictions, even if they had failed to comply
with otherwise applicable state rules concerning the challenging of those
convictions. In a prior decision, Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, No. 04-10566,
548 U.S. 331 (2006), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Convention did
not negate the need to apply state rules. The President of the United States,
however, issued a memo stating that the U.S. would "discharge its
institutional obligations" and have state courts follow the ICJ decision.
The Plaintiff in the immediate case, incarcerated in Texas, then filed
a Texas state court habeas application challenging his capital murder conviction
and death sentence because of the failure to inform him of his rights under
the Vienna Convention. The U.S. Supreme Court has now held that neither
the ICJ decision nor the President's memo are directly enforceable
federal law which would pre-empt state limits on the filing of successive
habeas petitions. The court further found that a treaty such as the Vienna
Convention is not binding domestic law in the U.S. when Congress has not
passed statutes to implement it, except if the treaty itself conveys an
intention that it be "self-executing." The plaintiff's habeas
petition was therefore properly dismissed. Medellin v. Texas, No. 06-984,
2008 U.S. Lexus 2912.
A Muslim inmate who was an Egyptian citizen
failed to show that the vegetarian meal plan offered him violated any of
his personal religious beliefs, and a nutritional analysis of the food
offered indicated that it satisfied recommended dietary allowances. Additionally,
the plan offered was created after consultation with a Muslim clergyman.
The court also found that the prisoner did not have an unqualified or absolute
right to send confidential mail from the prison to the Egyptian embassy
or consulate, so that the alleged refusal to allow him to do so could not
be the basis of a civil right claim. Sefeldeen v. Alameida, No. 05-15809,
2007 U.S. App. Lexis 13508 (9th Cir.).
A man born in Qatari, who was lawfully in
the U.S., and who has been detained without charges since 2003, when President
Bush designated him as an "enemy combatant," was ordered released
by a federal appeals court. The court, by a 2-1 vote, ruled that holding
civilians as detainees without charges for an unlimited period of time
could result in "disastrous consequences for the Constitution, and
the country." The court also found that there was no evidence that
the detainee had been engaged in the use of arms against the U.S. on a
battlefield or in a combat zone, and was therefore not an enemy combatant.
The U.S. government was ordered to release him, within a reasonable time,
from military custody. He could still, the court noted, be subjected to
either criminal charges, if any were brought, or to deportation proceedings.
Al-Marri v. Wright, #06-7427, 2007 U.S. App. Lexis 14109 (4th Cir.).