UPDATE: Demjanjuk plea denied
on May 6, 2009 at 4:16 pm
UPDATE Thursday p.m.  Justice John Paul Stevens denied the application by John Demjanjuk to delay his ordered deportation to Germany to face possible criminal charges over deaths at Nazi prison camps during World War II. The Justice issued no opinion.
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John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old retired auto worker in Ohio at the center of a decades-long legal fight over claims that he was a Nazi guard at German death camps during World War II, asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to delay his imminent deportation to face possible new criminal charges in Germany.
Claiming that his medical condition is so poor he would suffer the equivalent of torture if sent to Germany for jailing and trial, and arguing that the U.S. government had been deeply involved in spurring new charges in Germany, Demjanjuk’s lawyer asked for a stay until he can complete a new round of challenges, in lower courts and in the Supreme Court.
The application in Demjanjuk v. Holder (08A978) can be downloaded here; a May 1 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court refusing any further delay can be found here. The application was filed with Justice John Paul Stevens as the Circuit Justice; he may act on it alone or share it with his colleagues.
Demjanjuk, long pursued by the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting office, has been twice stripped of his U.S. citizenship, first in 1981. After that initial denaturlization, he was sent to Israel, tried on war crimes charges, convicted and sentenced to death. The Israel Supreme Court, however, overturned the conviction. He then returned to the U.S.
His second denaturalization came in 2002 — a ruling the Supreme Court declined to hear in 2004. Deportation proceedings then began, but Demjanjuk remained in the U.S. — he lives in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills — because other countries refused to accept his transfer.
In March, German officials ordered his arrest on charges of aiding in multiple murders at the Sobibor death camp in Poland; German officials then inicated they would accept his extradition from the U.S.
Since then, Demjanjuk has been challenging his deportation. His attorney on Tuesday sought a stay of his removal, indicating that he will file an appeal to the Supreme Court challenging the Sixth Circuit’s refusal of delay, will seek an order mandating that the Sixth Circuit delay his deportation, and will file an original habeas writ in the Supreme Court.
