Jose Munoz Santos v. Linda Thomas

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JOSE LUIS MUNOZ SANTOS, No. 12-56506 Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 2:11-cv-06330-MMM

LINDA R. THOMAS, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Margaret M. Morrow, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted En Banc January 12, 2016 Pasadena, California

Filed July 28, 2016

Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Chief Judge and M. Margaret McKeown, Kim McLane Wardlaw, William A. Fletcher, Richard R. Clifton, Jay S. Bybee, Consuelo M. Callahan, Milan D. Smith, Jr., Sandra S. Ikuta, Mary H. Murguia and John B. Owens, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bybee; Dissent by Judge Callahan SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus / Extradition

The en banc court reversed the district court’s judgment denying habeas relief from a magistrate judge’s order certifying Jose Luis Munoz Santos’s extradition to Mexico on kidnapping charges, and remanded, in a case in which Munoz sought to introduce evidence that incriminating statements made against him by his co-conspirators were obtained by…

Dissent by Judge CALLAHAN

OPINION

Jose Luis Munoz Santos (“Munoz”), appeals the district court’s denial of habeas *990 relief from a magistrate judge’s order certifying Munoz’s extradition to Mexico on charges of kidnapping. 1 In his extradition hearing, Munoz sought to introduce evidence that incriminating statements made against him by his co-conspirators were obtained by torture, and therefore could not support the probable cause required to extradite. The extradition court concluded that the evidence of coercion was not admissible in the extradition hearing, because the allegations were contained in statements in which the witnesses had recanted their previous incriminating statements. The court concluded that this rendered the allegations “contradictory” evidence — as opposed to “explanatory” evidence — and the allegations were therefore inadmissible in an extradition proceeding. See Collins v. Loisel, 259 U.S. 309, 316-17 , 42 S.Ct. 469 , 66 L.Ed. 956 (1922). The district court denied Munoz’s habeas petition, and a panel of this court affirmed, relying in part on our decision in Barapind v. Enomoto, 400 F.3d 744 (9th Cir.2005) (en banc) (per curiam). We took this case en…

with whom IKUTA, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting:

The question in this habeas case is straight-forward: Under the federal extradition statute, 18 U.S.C. §§ 3181-3195 , and the terms of the extradition treaty between the United States (“Government”) and Mexico, did the extradition judge err in excluding evidence that contradicts the Mexican government’s evidence of probable cause to believe that Jose Luis Munoz Santos (“petitioner”), a fugitive of Mexico, is guilty of kidnapping in Mexico? The majority answers with a resounding “yes,” overturning more than a century’s worth of extradition jurisprudence. It first re *1036 Views the extradition court’s decision for technical error, exceeding the scope of judicial review under well-established Supreme Court precedent. Second, despite its protestations to the contrary, the majority risks converting a probable cause hearing into a mini-trial with all the evidentiary trappings, again contrary to Supreme Court precedent. Moreover, by requiring extradition judges to consider and weigh evidence that a fugitive raises in defense of the criminal charge he faces abroad, the reliability of the foreign nation’s evidence is put to the test on…