Maduro to test US courts’ reluctance to apply international law in criminal cases, Reuters says

Nicolás Maduro is preparing to test a principle that US courts have rarely accepted: that alleged violations of international law or treaty obligations should force the dismissal of a criminal indictment. The deposed Venezuelan president is expected to file motions on Wednesday seeking to end his drug-trafficking case.

Maduro, 63, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Barry Pollack, is expected to argue that Maduro has immunity from criminal prosecution as the head of a sovereign state. He has also raised the circumstances of Maduro’s capture by the US military during a January 3 raid on oil-rich Venezuela.

The challenge faces a difficult path before Alvin Hellerstein, the US district judge for the Southern District of New York. International law generally protects sitting heads of state from prosecution in foreign courts. But six US experts in international law and criminal defense told Reuters that earlier cases resembling Maduro’s offer little support for his position.

A central issue will be whether Maduro qualifies as a head of state. US courts generally leave disputes over recognition of foreign leaders to the president and the executive branch. Washington has not recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s president since 2019, when it rejected the election that brought him to office after the 2018 vote. The United States also called his 2024 reelection fraudulent, while Maduro maintains that both elections were fair.

Shirin Kettner, a University of California, Davis law professor and former State Department lawyer, said courts in the few cases involving the issue had essentially accepted the executive branch’s decision to bring charges as establishing that immunity did not apply. Courts have also consistently held that criminal defendants can stand trial even when they may have been brought to the United States unlawfully. Those precedents, experts said, favor prosecutors.

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In several cases in which this issue arose, and there have been very few, courts essentially accepted the executive branch’s decision to bring charges as the decision establishing that immunity did not exist.