Not being sympathetic to SBF here, but that's quite the legal gotcha.
No wonder people don't trust the law/lawyers.
No wonder people don't trust the law/lawyers.
"An extradition treaty between the United States and the Bahamas, where FTX was based, says a country must consent before defendants can be tried on charges brought after their extradition.
Prosecutors said they asked the Bahamas to agree to those charges, which include conspiracy to bribe Chinese officials and commit bank fraud, but did not know when the Caribbean country would grant its consent." via https://www.reuters.com/legal/bankman-fried-loses-bid-toss-c...
If he had contested the extradition, then the Bahamas would be deciding to extradite him on the old and the new charges. He decided to come back for the original charges and now the Bahamas decides whether they will allow the US to bring the new charges - basically whether they would have extradited him for those new charges.
The legal gotcha would be if he returned and then the Bahamas couldn't consent to them bringing additional charges - that they couldn't extradite him for the new charges. If I commit fraud and have a traffic violation, I can't voluntarily come back to the US for the traffic violation and then say "the Bahamas can't extradite me for the fraud charge because I voluntarily came back for traffic violation!" No, the Bahamas would then need to decide if they want to extradite me on the fraud charge. If they don't give consent for that charge, I'm only facing the traffic violation and then I can leave back for the Bahamas. If the Bahamas says "yea, we would have extradited him for the fraud charge so go for it," then they can charge me with the fraud as well.
In this case, it's a statement from the US to the Bahamas about what they intend to do to SBF once he's in custody. If the US then goes on and punishes SBF even harder than what they originally told the Bahamas, the Bahamas might feel lied to. Think of it as a "we wouldn't have extradited if we knew he was facing the death penalty" kind of scenario. This rule thus exists to give the Bahamas a chance to remedy that.
Also, I BET YOU that behind the scenes the us is telling the Bahamas "you better not complain about this or else we'll get you on that other thing". Because.... you think US prosecutors would leave this possibility to chance? Why would the Bahamas not complain?
That's right, this is why people view lawyers as dishonest.
Because that concept is consistent with all of US law - See third party standing, third party beneficiaries, etc.
In the US, you usually can't raise claims on behalf of others, whether they are constitutional, contractual, etc.
This was not a surprise to anyone involved - the US, SBF, the bahamas, the lawyers, etc.
They are all quite aware of this.
You can argue this mechanism sucks, or is bad, but the answer to your question is because that's what all of US law says everywhere - this is not some unique feature of extradition. It's a core concept common across both civil and criminal law.
Anyway I understood your point, thanks for making the effort.
Non-lawyer elected officials, actually.
Lawyers are just charged with knowing enough of the mess to be able to advise people - but don't shoot the messenger.
The criminal system is also deliberately adversarial, something lawyers didn't make up either.
The civil system is not, at least.
What do you base this on? It depends on the year but Congress is usually 30-50% lawyers.
A lot of legislative drafting is carried out by lawyers in the Legislative Counsel (of the House of Reps, of California, etc.), anyway.
Unless you mean these rules were written before the Bar associations were a thing
Those that aren't are from very close to founding, done in conventions that were mostly not lawyers :)
These are mostly not modern doctrines created by Congress.
If the Bahamas wanted to keep him, they wouldn't have extradited him in the first place. Why would they want to protect SBF?
Because most countries are, in the general sense, not hugely interested in harboring (or even letting in) foreign criminals.
He's not a Bahamian national, they have zero reason to not turn him over.
The only reason they might want to keep him is to get their pound of flesh, given that he's also defrauded Bahamian citizens, but they seem to be quite happy with letting Uncle Sam foot the bill for prosecuting and jailing him.
Third party standing for rights is basically not a thing in the US, except in rare cases (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_standing)
Even in other realms, this is usually the case - it's very rare for a third party beneficiary to be able to raise rights that belong to someone else.
For example, Bob writes some software and releases it under the GPL. Evilco takes it and ships binaries of it. You get a binary. You ask them for source. They say GFY.
You are a third party beneficiary of Bob's contract with Evilco. Bob has the right to sue them in court. However, you probably do not have the right to sue them for breach of contract.
(There is nuance i'm avoiding here about to make the point).