Recent Judicial Decisions
| Published date | 01 October 1931 |
| Date | 01 October 1931 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3100400415 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
RECENT
JUDICIAL
DECISIONS
THE
FUGITIVES
FROM
DEVIL’S
ISLAND
ONCE
more public attention has been drawn to the subject of extradition,
to which reference was made in these notes last year in connection with the
Hatry case and the public demand for the surrender of Gialdini, a foreigner
associated with Hatry in the transactions which led to the conviction of the
latter. On the present occasion the subject has come under notice in con-
nection with the recent decision
of
the Privy Council in the very interesting
case of the fugitives from Devil’s Island
(Kossekechatko
v.
Attorney
General
for
Trinidad)
reported in the
Times
of 25th and 28th July last. The case
came before the Privy Council by way of an appeal from the Supreme Court
of
Trinidad on
habeas corpus
proceedings, on the refusal
of
that Court to
grant writs of
habeas corpus
to three of the fugitive convicts concerned. These
convicts were among the survivors of a party of eleven who had come from
the prison at Cayenne-generally known as
‘
Devil’s Island.’ It appeared in
the course of the proceedings that such escapes from Devil’s Island were not
infrequent owing to the fact that with a certain wind there is a current which
brings small boats to the coast of Trinidad
;
and that, accordingly, it had
been necessary to pass special legislation in Trinidad providing that any
constable might arrest and detain any person whom there was reasonable
cause to suspect was a fugitive from French Guiana.
At the time of going to press the Privy Council, whose decision to release
the prisoners from custody was announced on 27th July, had not delivered
their judgment giving the reasons for allowing the appeal. It is impossible,
therefore, to say what point among the many interesting and important ques-
tions discussed in the course of argument will be the foundation of the decision
of
the Court. Some of these points will be of considerable interest to police
officers who have to handle cases of extradition. Extradition has been suc-
cinctly and neatly described by Mr. Moriarty in his useful work on
‘
Police
Procedure and Administration
’
as
‘
the process by which a person who has
committed a crime in
this
country and has fled abroad,
or
vice
versa,
is arrested
and taken for trial to the country in which he has committed the crime.’
This, however, does not cover the case
of
the convicted person who escapes
from the place of detention where he is serving his sentence. The Extra-
dition Act,
1870,
and the treaties with foreign States, which are necessary in
order to put that Act into operation, provide machinery for the return
of
convicted fugitive criminals
as
well as for the return of accused fugitive
criminals. Most of the points discussed in the Devil’s Island case apply only
in cases where the person whose extradition is applied for is
a
convicted
fugitive criminal. It is obvious that where a convict escapes from a convict
settlement or prison in which he has been confined for many years there may
be serious difficulty in securing evidence showing the exact nature of the
crime of which he was convicted. There may be a record of the conviction
which merely indicates that on such and such a date he was convicted
of
a
628
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