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Comment by anothernewdude | Hacker News Reader

A system of "mass incarceration" should have no impact on any individual case. That's beyond stupid.

"Mass incarceration" may not be the best phrasing, but the particularly inhumane (for a developed country) nature of the US criminal justice system does lose it a lot of extradition cases. In particular, punitive long-term solitary confinement is commonly used in the US but is not generally permitted in most European countries.

It's a human rights issue. The US doesn't have a very good record. The most usual scenario in which this comes up is in extradition cases where the person involved could face the death penalty (of life imprisonment I think too). It wouldn't make sense for the UK (where there is no death penalty) to extradite a person to somewhere they no longer have that right to life. This is just a natural extension of that policy.

It should, if its properties have material impact on the individual case. Which is what the judge argued here.

agreed this sounds like political activism judging. how can one judge say we can’t extradite to the us because the system isn’t good enough when other extraditions are ok?

It's not activism, it's the law in the UK.

The judge interprets how the law applies to the specific facts of this case. The law says extradition is not allowed in some circumstances. Those circumstances include how the prisoner is likely to be treated, and the health of the prisoner. Some other extraditions are ok according to the law because those factors vary in each case.

Not really. s91 of the Extradition Act requires that "the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him", the judge must "order the person’s discharge".

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41/section/91

There have been extraditions of other people charged with computer hacking offences like Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon where there was a similar concern. In both Love and McKinnon's cases, both were on the autistic spectrum.

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