Extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States—Ian Norris

As we predicted on Tuesday, the High Court’s decision regarding the NatWest Three spelled trouble for another British executive facing extradition to the US. Ian Norris, the former CEO of “manufacturing giant” Morgan Crucible, “lost the first round of his high court battle against extradition to the United States on charges of price fixing.”^[1] Mr. Norris has been indicted out of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on charges of conspiracy, antitrust violations, and obstruction of justice, and he has been fighting his extradition from the UK by arguing that “the home secretary’s decision to order his removal under the Extradition Act was ‘unlawful and irrational.’”^[2]

He also argued that the extradition agreements between the US and the UK were “hopelessly lopsided in favour of the US authorities,” but the Home Office argued that extradition assistance between the two countries “is practically equivalent.”^[3] That argument seems a bit stretched, as we have discussed previously, but nonetheless, the High Court ruled that Mr. Norris could be extradited.^[4]

Mr. Norris will challenge the High Court’s ruling on human rights grounds because he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.^[5]

It may be too late to help the NatWest Three or Mr. Norris, but British MPs across the political spectrum are considering revamping their extradition laws.^[6] “Tory higher education spokesman Boris Johnson plac[ed] an early day motion calling for a strengthening of requirements on US prosecutors,” and “Labour’s Sadiq Khan MP and Lib Dem leadership frontrunner Sir Menzies Campbell” backed the measure.^[7] The group objects to:

• the abolition of a requirement for US prosecutors to set out the evidence against defendants in a British court and a defendant's right to challenge the evidence before extradition is granted.
• the requirement for British prosecutors to set out and defend, before the US courts, evidence relating to their extradition requests.
• the absence of a legal process to determine in which territory prosecutions with multinational elements should most appropriately be pursued. As a result, the British courts may be forced to surrender defendants even if they regard the case against them as a matter for the British courts.^[8]

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[1] Retired Executive Loses US Extradition Appeal, Press Association (via The Guardian), Feb. 24, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Simon Bowers, Room for Improvement, Say MPs, The Guardian, Feb. 22, 2006.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.