Taking the threat of death over the line

By HOWARD TROXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 1999

The gruesome 1997 murder of Sheila Bellush, and Mexico's return to us of suspect Jose Luis Del Toro Jr. this week, puts the spotlight on a tough area of the law:

Extradition.

If we are going to have the death penalty, Bellush's murder surely qualifies. The Sarasota woman was shot in the face, and then her throat was slit in front of her quadruplet toddlers. It looked like murder for hire.

But Del Toro, who is from south Texas, cannot get the death penalty if he is convicted. He fled to Mexico. Mexico would not give him back until we promised not to kill him.

This was our choice: Del Toro serving life in prison if convicted, or no Del Toro at all.

You might be thinking, who the heck is Mexico to tell the U.S. whether it can execute one of its own citizens? Certainly that is how Jamie Bellush, the victim's husband, sees it.

"Mr. Del Toro will spend the rest of his life in prison for slaughtering, no, butchering my wife in cold blood, in front of my children," he testified to Congress last month. (You will forgive him for presuming Del Toro's guilt in advance.)

Dan Miller, a member of Congress from Sarasota, has taken up the cause and demands that the United States renegotiate its extradition treaty -- a move that the Clinton administration opposes.

"What if," Miller asks, "Timothy McVeigh had fled to Mexico?"

But Miller has an uphill battle. Most nations of the world, like Mexico, do not use capital punishment. Most of them will not agree to help the United States carry it out. The clause in our 1978 treaty with Mexico is typical:

ARTICLE 8 Capital Punishment

When the offense for which extradition is requested is punishable by death under the laws of the requesting party and the laws of the requested party do not permit such punishment for that offense, extradition may be refused unless the requesting party furnishes such assurances as the requested party considers sufficient that the death penalty shall not be imposed, or, if imposed, shall not be executed.

Miller says that since Del Toro was in Mexico illegally, the Mexican government had a simple alternative: deport him to the United States. Instead, Mexico chose the lengthy extradition process.

Extradition is a fairly recent invention in human history. Nations did not begin signing formal treaties until the 1700s. Before then, if you wanted to pluck somebody out of another country, you did it either by force, by trick, or by the consent of the other side's ruler.

Certain precedents have become well-established among most nations:

• They will not surrender their own citizens except in special cases.
• They require that the accused's acts be recognized as a crime in both places.
• They require that the accused be tried only for the specific crime alleged.
• They generally refuse to extradite for purely political crimes.

Del Toro qualified in every way, except for the death penalty clause. That is the deal our fellow nations have demanded. If we want a different deal, then we will have to persuade them, pressure them -- or force them.

There would be a price tag for forcing the issue. It would cause untold damage and resentment, maybe even destroy extradition as we know it.

Yet the idea that any American criminal can escape the full force of U.S. justice merely by hopping across the border is bizarre. If that is the case, then there are roughly 375 men and women on Florida's death row simply because they were too dumb to travel.

Will we decide who lives and who dies based on who bought a bus ticket?

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.