Long Arm of the Law

The U.S. high court reached across American borders last week and tweaked a neighbor's nose. In a 6-to-3 opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that a "forcible abduction" from a foreign country -- in this case, Mexico -- does not prohibit a defendant's trial in the U.S. "for violation of this country's criminal laws."

The case involved Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a gynecologist who two years ago was dragged from his Guadalajara office by Mexican bounty hunters, flown to El Paso and handed over to agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Alvarez-Machain still awaits trial in Los Angeles on federal charges of conspiring to torture and kill dea agent Enrique Camarena, kidnapped and murdered in Guadalajara in 1985. The doctor allegedly injected Camarena with lidocaine, which kept his heart going to prolong his torture and interrogation by Mexican officials and drug kingpins.

Attorney General William Barr called the landmark decision "an important victory . . . against terrorists and narcotraffickers." But Justice John Paul Stevens, who was joined in his dissent by Harry Blackmun and Sandra Day O'Connor, warned that "most courts throughout the civilized world will be deeply disturbed by the 'monstrous' decision the court announces today."

Certainly the Mexicans -- and many other Latin Americans -- were upset. Calling the ruling "invalid and unacceptable," Mexico threatened to suspend antidrug cooperation with the U.S. -- a threat rescinded after Washington offered assurances that its sovereignty would be respected in the future. But the diplomatic dust had hardly settled when Mexican officials charged that on June 13 agents from the U.S. crossed the border, seized Teodulo Romo Lopez and returned him to Tucson to face bail-jumping and cocaine-trafficking charges. The Salinas government quickly protested.