🇮🇹 Italy → 🇺🇸 United States

The decision on an extradition request—even where it takes the form of a ruling of no need to proceed due to the person’s absence from the national territory—falls within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal sitting in its collegiate composition, and not of a delegated judge. Accordingly, where, as in the present case, the delegated judge has exercised a power that the legal system reserves to the Court of Appeal, the impugned decision must be deemed affected by absolute nullity for lack of judicial capacity, as it entails a violation of the constitutional principle of the natural judge pre-established by law.

In extradition matters, the seizure of the corpus delicti and of items pertaining thereto, ordered on an urgent basis by the judicial police within the framework of an extradition procedure, must be validated by the Court of Appeal. The latter is required to provide reasons—on the basis of the applicable conventional framework, as well as Article 714(1) of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, insofar as not derogated—regarding the existence of a nexus of pertinence between the seized assets and the offence underlying the extradition request, through an assessment of the evidentiary needs put forward by the requesting foreign authority (in the present case, a seizure carried out by the judicial police in the context of an extradition procedure initiated by the United States of America).

The absence of the person sought for extradition, even if due to a “deliberate escape,” results in a ruling that the case should not proceed; the presence of the person sought for extradition in the requested State is an essential prerequisite for the application of the extradition process: if that person is no longer within the territory of the Italian Republic, this essential prerequisite is no longer met