United States v. Jeffrey Sale Lualemaga, AKA Jeffrey Sale

The State of Hawaii violated the Interstate Agreement on Detainers Act (IAD), 18 U.S.CApp. 2, by failing to inform Jeffrey Sale Lualemaga of his right to request a final disposition of his federal indictment within 180 days of the United States lodging a detainer against him in state prison. That violation resulted in part from the federal detainer, which erroneously identified Lualemaga as an unsen-tenced prisoner not protected by the IAD. In reality, Hawaii had sentenced Lualema-ga six weeks earlier and, therefore, the United States erred in telling Hawaii that Lualemaga was not protected by the IAD.

More than 180 days after the violation, Lualemaga filed a motion to dismiss the indictment under the IAD, which the district court denied. After pleading guilty to the federal indictment, he filed a motion for credit for time served in state custody, which the court also denied. This appeal followed.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We conclude the State of Hawaii and the United States violated a significant provision of the IAD, but that the violation cannot support the dismissal of the federal indictment. The plain language of the IAD provides the remedy of…