U.S. judge puts Britain on trial.

• Author: Udesky, Laurie
• Position: Extradition of Jimmy Smyth

In mid-October, Irish fugitive Jimmy Smyth became the center of a landmark case testing a crucial amendment to the extradition treaty between the United States and Britain. The case also, in essence, places the British government on trial.

Smyth was nabbed by FBI agents in San Francisco in 1992 as he was leaving for work. He had been living in San Francisco and working as a house painter since he escaped in 1983 from Northern Ireland's Maze prison, where he was serving twenty years for attempted murder of an off-duty prison official - a crime he says he did not commit.

The British government wants Smyth extradited and returned to its custody in Northern Ireland. To avoid extradition, Smyth has to show that his life would be in danger if he were returned. But a dramatic order by the court shifted part of the burden of proof onto Britain. When the British government refused to comply with Smyth's lawyers' request for documents showing that Catholics are persecuted in Northern Ireland, U.S. District Judge Barbara Caulfield introduced two "rebuttable presumptions" in the case. That is, she ordered Britain to disprove two claims: that British security forces are in collusion with Protestant death squads, and that Catholics suspected or charged with...