Law: Putnam County vs. Canada

Two U.S. bounty hunters stir an international legal battle

In the Old West, when a sheriff could afford to ride only so far from town in pursuit of a criminal, bounty hunters acted as de facto freelance deputies, collecting rewards for bringing back fugitives. Times have changed, but the bounty hunter survives, working now for bail-bond companies eager to capture bail jumpers. True to tradition, local authorities still ask few questions about the methods used in returning a suspect to their jurisdiction.

Foreign governments, however, can prove more sensitive. For months now, Canada and the state of Florida have been locked in a legal battle sparked by two American bounty hunters who nabbed a Canadian millionaire wanted for jumping bail in Florida. Last week the international dispute grew so hot that Secretary of State George Shultz and Attorney General William French Smith took the unusual step of asking Florida authorities to back down.

The trouble started in May 1981, when Sidney Jaffe, a prominent Toronto land developer, failed to appear for a pretrial hearing in rural Putnam County, Fla.; the charges involved criminal violations of the state’s Uniform Land Sales Practices Law by a Florida real estate firm Jaffe owned. Faced with the loss of $137,000 it had posted in bail, the Accredited Surety & Casualty Co. decided not to wait for a formal extradition request and instead sent Timm Johnsen and Daniel Kear to Toronto to bring Jaffe back. Like most modern-day bounty hunters, Johnsen and Kear figured they would earn 10% of the bond, in this case $13,700, plus expenses and a bonus.

The capture was quick and dirty, so Jaffe claims. He was returning to his condominium from an afternoon jog when he was lured into a car, handcuffed and then taken south to the U.S. border at Niagara Falls. “This is a gotcha,” Johnsen allegedly told Jaffe, who contends that the bounty hunters beat him. Local police, alerted by Jaffe’s daughter, refused to intervene when he appealed to them at the Niagara Falls International Airport. Kear and Johnsen took him aboard a chartered jet waiting to fly to Florida.

Convicted in Putnam County on 28 counts of land-sale irregularities, plus one count of failing to appear for his trial, Jaffe, now 58, was sentenced to 35 years. Florida legal observers were astonished at the severity of his sentence, especially since no one else has ever been charged under the 1963 state statute.

The Canadian government was less astonished than infuriated. More than any other nation, it has been scrupulously cooperative in complying with U.S. requests for the extradition of fugitives. Florida’s failure to file the forms and cowboy-style tactics hardly seemed justified. Under a 1971 U.S.-Canada treaty, Florida Governor Robert Graham could have requested Jaffe’s extradition. But Putnam County State Attorney Stephen Boyles never provided the Governor with the necessary documentation.

A raft of diplomatic protests from Canada failed to win Jaffe’s release. Canada then took the unprecedented step in June of filing a writ of habeas corpus with the U.S. district court in Jacksonville. The petition cited a 1960 United Nations resolution that accused Israel of violating Argentina’s sovereignty in the kidnaping of Nazi War Criminal Adolf Eichmann; Canada noted that the U.S. had supported the U.N. resolution. Last week Shultz and Smith put the U.S. Government on Canada’s side by asking the Florida parole and probation commission to parole Jaffe immediately. Said Shultz in a stiff letter: “As no good reason appears why the extradition treaty was not utilized to secure Mr. Jaffe’s return, it is perfectly understandable that the government of Canada is outraged by his alleged kidnaping.”

At week’s end Florida parole-board authorities rebuffed the Shultz request, informing him that they will not intervene to free Jaffe now. And Putnam County is not finished with Jaffe. Two weeks ago, Prosecutor Boyles filed new charges against him, this time alleging organized fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years. Meanwhile, Bounty Hunters Johnsen and Kear are due in Toronto for a pretrial hearing in November on kidnaping charges. Thus the undiplomatic international triangle is knotted up in several courts (in Canada, Putnam County and U.S. federal court) with no quick solution in sight.