| Litigants: | Ker v. Illinois |
| Arguedate: | April 27 |
| Argueyear: | 1886 |
| Decidedate: | December 6 |
| Decideyear: | 1886 |
| Fullname: | Frederick Ker v. People of the State of Illinois |
| Usvol: | 119 |
| Uspage: | 436 |
| Parallelcitations: | 7 S. Ct. 225; 30 L. Ed. 421; 1886 U.S. LEXIS 2007 |
| Prior: | Writ of Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois |
| Holding: | There is no language in the 1870 Treaty of Extradition between the U.S. and Peru, which says in terms that a party fleeing from the U.S. to escape punishment for crime becomes thereby entitled to an asylum in the country to which Ker has fled. |
| Majority: | Miller |
| Joinmajority: | unanimous |
Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436 (1886),[1] is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that a fugitive kidnapped from abroad could not claim any violation of the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.
The incident that led to this decision involved a Pinkerton Detective Agency agent, Henry Julian, was hired by the federal government to collect a larcenist, Frederick Ker, who had fled to Peru. Although Julian had the necessary extradition papers - the two governments had negotiated an extradition treaty a decade earlier - he found that there was no official to meet his request due to the recent Chilean military occupation of Lima. Rather than return home empty-handed, Julian kidnapped the fugitive, with assistance from Chilean forces, and placed him on a U.S. vessel heading back to the United States.