[nraynaud]

France has an US citizen in custody for killing an abortion doctor in the US. Can't extradite him because that would be accessory to death penalty, which a European treaty forbids, I don't remember if the US sent the file to procecute him in France. I don't think France is under embargo.

[bawolff]

Can't you just promise not to kill him?

Canada also refuses to extradite people to places with the death penalty unless they promise not to use it, but extradites to usa all the time.

[stephen_g]

US diplomatic assurances aren't considered reliable (e.g. [1], also you can look up the case of David Mendoza). My understanding is that the State Department makes the promises, and then the Justice Department's policy is to assume that since their department didn't make the assurances, that the assurances that were made don't actually apply to them.

1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/07/the-us-diplom...

[OkayPhysicist]

Specifically, it's that due the structure of the US government, it's nigh-impossible for the US to make binding agreements at all, especially in one-off cases like this. Our diplomatic representatives are under the Executive branch, which is subject to change every 4 years, and successors have no obligation to uphold agreements that their predecessors made. The power to actually make law that binds American citizens falls to Congress under the Legislative branch, which has to pass law making any agreement the diplomats make legally binding internally, which they may or may not do, and the diplomats negotiating such terms have no power to sway that one way or another. Then the actual execution of the agreement would fall to the courts, which could potentially find a deal that managed to be negotiated by the diplomats and legislated by congress contradictory to the Constitution, and nullify it.

Add on top of this the difficulty the US has passing any legislation whatsoever, and you've got a whole mess on your hands.

And I almost forgot that the accused would likely be facing charges in an individual state, which adds another layer to the mess, wherein the state likely has the sovereignty to execute one of its residents regardless of any international agreements that the Executive branch of the federal government makes.

[salamanderss]

Your and other comments below are fascinating, but she was already sentenced to life instead of death, and after her jailbreak was granted asylum as a free woman in Cuba