In law, rendition is a "surrender" or "handing over" of persons or property, particularly from one jurisdiction to another. For criminal suspects, extradition is the most common type of rendition. Rendition can also be seen as the act of handing over, after the request for extradition has taken place.

Rendition can also mean the act of rendering, i.e. delivering, a judicial decision, or of explaining a series of events, as a defendant or witness. It can also mean the execution of a judicial order by the directed parties. But extraordinary rendition is legally distinct from both deportation and extradition.

Rendition in the United States

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Interstate rendition

Rendition between states is required by Article Four, Section Two of the United States Constitution; this section is often termed the rendition clause.

Each state has a presumptive duty to render suspects on the request of another state, as under the full faith and credit clause. The Supreme Court has established certain exceptions; a state may allow its own legal proceedings against a suspect to take precedence, for example. It was established in Kentucky v. Dennison that interstate rendition and extradition were not a federal writ; that is, a state could not petition the federal courts to have another state honor its request for rendition, if the state receiving the request chose not to do so. In rare cases, usually involving the death penalty, states have refused or delayed rendition. In 1987, this was overturned by Puerto Rico v. Branstad ^*, so a federal interest in resolving interstate rendition disputes was established. Nevertheless, the right of refusal of rendition was not overturned.

Extradition is commonly requested by state attorneys general for fugitives for whom a warrant has been issued.

Bounty hunters and bondsmen once had limited authority to capture fugitives, even outside the state where they were wanted by the courts. When they deliver such a person, this is considered rendition, as it did not involve the intervention of the justice system in the state of capture. Under more recent law, bounty hunters are not legally permitted to act outside of the state where the offense took place, but cases of rendition still take place due to the financial interest the bondsmen have in returning a fugitive and recovering the bail. Formally, such fugitive cases should be turned over to the state for execution under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act (1936) and the Uniform Extradition and Rendition Act (1980), if the fugitive's location is known, or the United States Marshals Service, when it is not.

Rendition was infamously used to recapture fugitive slaves, who under the Constitution and various federal laws had virtually no human rights. As the movement for abolition grew, Northern states increasingly refused to comply or cooperate with rendition of escaped slaves, leading to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. This non-cooperation was behind the longstanding principle of refusal, only reverted in the 1987 decision.

International rendition

Since the 1980s, the United States has increasingly turned to rendition as a judicial and extra-judicial method for dealing with foreign defendants. The first well-known case involved the Achille Lauro hijackers, who were in an airplane over international waters that was forced down by United States Air Force fighter planes in an attempt to turn them over to United States Government representatives for transport to and trial in the United States. Later, the practice expanded to include the deportation and expulsion of persons deemed enemy aliens or terrorists from countries into United States custody.

The CIA was granted permission to use rendition in a presidential directive that dates to the Clinton administration, although very few uses were documented during that time. The practice has grown sharply since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now includes a form where suspects are taken into US custody but delivered to a third-party state, often without ever being on American soil. Because such cases do not involve the rendering country's judiciary, they have been termed extraordinary rendition.

Human rights groups charge that extraordinary rendition is a violation of the United Nations Convention on Torture, because suspects are taken to countries where torture during interrogation remains legal, thus circumventing the protections the captives would enjoy in the United States or other nations in the Western world. Its legality remains highly controversial, as the United States outlaws the use of torture, and the U.S. Constitution guarantees due process. Rendered suspects are denied due process because they are arrested without charges and deprived of legal counsel.

External links

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• Rendition of Anthony Burns - notorious fugitive slave law incident
• Legal history of interstate rendition
• Outsourcing Torture, from The New Yorker, February 7, 2005
• 2000 State Department list of renditions and extraditions - through 2000
• Alternatives to extradition - definition of rendition and extraordinary rendition used by the United States Department of Justice

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