Back to the scene of the crime

“Once we found the car in Michi­gan, I knew he was alive.”

— Peter Elliott, U.S. Mar­shalls Service

“The gov­er­nor shall have arrested and deliv­ered to the exec­u­tive author­ity of any other state of the United States, any per­son charged in that state with trea­son, felony, or other crime, who has fled from jus­tice and is found in this state.”

— Ohio Revised Code, Sec­tion 2963.02

When Lynn Jack­en­heimer didn’t return to her home in Ohio from a Fourth of July trip to North Car­olina her fam­ily and friends sprang into action. They orga­nized searches, printed posters and even had shirts made with her image. She had been vaca­tion­ing on the Outer Banks with her two chil­dren and her boyfriend Nate Sum­mer­field, who was the father of her younger child.

The mys­tery sur­round­ing what hap­pened to her seemed to come to a close when Sum­mer­field returned to Ohio with the chil­dren, dropped them off with a fam­ily mem­ber and told that fam­ily mem­ber that he had killed Jack­en­heimer in North Car­olina and dumped her body there. He then fled the area and dis­ap­peared from sight. Shortly there­after, Jackenheimer’s body was found in Frisco, North Car­olina, about a half hour from the vaca­tion spot.

Law enforce­ment launched an imme­di­ate search for Sum­mer­field. Local, state and fed­eral offi­cials joined in the search. They located his car in Michi­gan near the bor­der with Indi­ana. They tracked any infor­ma­tion about his move­ments and after weeks of get­ting few leads, located him on Wednes­day morn­ing of this week in a motel in Wadsworth, not far from where the entire ordeal began.

While Jack­en­heimer and Summerfield’s trip began in Ohio and his dis­ap­pear­ance occurred in Ohio, the mur­der took place in North Car­olina and so the proper juris­dic­tion for Summerfield’s pros­e­cu­tion is in North Car­olina. But Sum­mer­field is cur­rently in jail in Ohio. So how does he get back to the Tar Heel State?

The return of a fugi­tive from one state to another or even from one nation to another is achieved through the process of extra­di­tion. Gen­er­ally, the process is fairly straight­for­ward, but because of the num­ber of peo­ple and hear­ings involved it can take some time to com­plete. In many cases, a per­son sim­ply con­sents to their return. Media out­lets will often report that the per­son has “waived extra­di­tion.” In point of fact, the per­son hasn’t waived extra­di­tion, they have waived extra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings and ensured that extra­di­tion will imme­di­ately occur.

In cases where for­mal extra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings are not waived, the request to return the pris­oner comes from the Gov­er­nor of the state desir­ing the per­son and goes to the Gov­er­nor of the state hold­ing the per­son (or, in the case of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, to a jus­tice of the D.C. Supreme Court). Ohio has an entire chap­ter of its crim­i­nal code devoted to the extra­di­tion process. A person’s guilt or inno­cence is not deter­mined in an extra­di­tion pro­ceed­ing. That’s because the pur­pose of the extra­di­tion is to return the per­son to the juris­dic­tion where the crime is alleged to have occurred for the very pur­pose of con­duct­ing a trial.

Under Ohio law, a per­son fac­ing extra­di­tion has the right to a hear­ing at which the judge must inform the per­son, “of the demand made for his sur­ren­der and of the crime with which he is charged, and that he has the right to demand and pro­cure legal coun­sel. If the pris­oner or his coun­sel desires to test the legal­ity of his arrest, the judge shall fix a rea­son­able time to be allowed him within which to apply for a writ of habeas cor­pus.” The per­son may be (and gen­er­ally is) held in cus­tody dur­ing extra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings. If the court ulti­mately deter­mines that the extra­di­tion request is proper, the per­son is trans­ported to the request­ing state. This is some­times done directly by law enforce­ment and some­times done by an inter­state trans­port agency.

Summerfield’s extra­di­tion will be just the begin­ning of his legal pro­cess­ing. His pros­e­cu­tion in North Car­olina could take months, but it won’t begin until offi­cials in Ohio order his return.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor at the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Aug 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.