United States v. Bello Murillo

Defendant appealed his conviction for the murder of Special Agent James Terry Watson. Agent Watson - as an Assistant Attaché for the United States Mission in Colombia - was an internationally protected person (an IPP). Defendant, a citizen of Colombia, pleaded guilty to offenses of kidnapping conspiracy and murder of an IPP. Defendant argued that his prosecution in this country for offenses committed in Colombia contravened the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Applying the arbitrary-or-unfair framework, the court concluded that defendant's prosecution in this country was not fundamentally unfair where kidnapping and murder are "self-evidently criminal." Furthermore, the IPP convention alone gave defendant notice sufficient to satisfy due process. The court rejected defendant's contention that because the United States Code provisions implementing the IPP Convention require knowledge of the victim’s IPP status that Bello did not possess, those provisions cannot have put him on notice that he was subject to prosecution in this country. Accordingly, there is no merit to defendant’s mens rea contention - nor his broader claim that the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause precluded his prosecution in this country - and the court must uphold his kidnapping conspiracy and murder convictions. View "United States v. Bello Murillo" on Justia Law