Longtime fugitive Ira Einhorn listens to his lawyer Dominique Delthil. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

Smiling and relaxed, the 58-year-old Einhorn made a brief appearance inside Bordeaux's stately stone courthouse to be formally told about the second request for his extradition filed by the U.S. government and the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

Then it was back to the mid-security Gradignan jail, where Einhorn will remain at least until Tuesday morning. A court hearing then will determine whether he is to be freed while the extradition request wends its way through the French judicial system.

The process could take up to two months, attorneys on both sides estimated yesterday.

Einhorn, who fled the United States for Europe in 1981 as he was about to go to trial for Maddux's murder, has lived quietly in the French village of Champagne-Mouton since the last U.S. extradition request against him was thrown out by a French appeals court here in December.

But a French prosecutor warned yesterday that if Einhorn is released now he might flee rather than face a tougher new extradition attempt.

"You take the train to Bordeaux, a plane to Madrid, then you go to South America, and that's it," said Prosecutor Jacques Defos du Rau, who is representing the U.S. Justice Department and Philadelphia in the case.

Groundwork for the new case was laid in January, when the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a law granting Einhorn a new murder trial -- if he chooses to have one -- once he is returned to the United States.

The fugitive Einhorn had been tried in absentia in Philadelphia in 1993 and found guilty of murdering Maddux, a Bryn Mawr graduate whose decaying corpse was found in a trunk in Einhorn's Philadelphia apartment.

Einhorn's life on the lam ended in June 1997, when he was tracked down by French police in southwestern France and arrested at the converted windmill he shared with the Swedish woman he had married, Annika Flodin. At the time, Philadelphia officials expressed confidence that he would quickly be extradited.

But a three-judge French panel denied the U.S. request on the grounds that Einhorn would not be retried on the murder charge once he returned home -- something that would automatically be granted to any French fugitive who had previously been convicted in absentia.

The new Pennsylvania law should overcome that French legal hurdle, said Defos du Rau. The next extradition decision "should be favorable . . . because the only loophole was the fact he could not have a new trial," he said.

But Einhorn's French attorney, Dominique Delthil, called the law "morally shocking" because it was written specifically to deal with Einhorn. He predicted there would be little sympathy from French judges toward "a law that was passed for just one man. . . . You can't use the law, which is general for everyone, to settle personal matters."

At a news conference about the case in Philadelphia yesterday, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham chose her words carefully, noting that French courts "believe public statements by officials in charge of investigations and prosecutions erode a presumption of innocence."
"Therefore, any statement I might make . . . might be used to dismiss the Einhorn matter," she said.

She praised the French government for its efforts in rearresting Einhorn, and said the process began in January, two days after the Pennsylvania law was passed, when Abraham and State Attorney General Mike Fisher met in Washington with top U.S. State Department officials about the case.

In May, Gov. Ridge signed a new extradition order for Einhorn. On June 10, Abraham said, she signed and sent to the State and Justice Departments a new affidavit setting forth grounds for Einhorn's extradition alleging "new circumstances" -- the new legislation.

That paperwork -- described as "voluminous" by Assistant District Attorney Joel Rosen, who prosecuted Einhorn in absentia in 1993 -- then had to be translated and sent through the French bureaucracy.

"Remember our system and theirs are different," Abraham said yesterday. "We think from mid-June until Sept. 20 is amazing speed."
On Monday, Einhorn was rearrested in Champagne-Mouton while making one of his regular twice-weekly visits to the local police station -- visits that are required as part of a still-pending illegal-entry case that was filed against Einhorn because he moved to France using false IDs.

Within hours, Einhorn found himself back in jail in Bordeaux, the same jail in which he had spent six months while waiting for a decision in the previous extradition case. Delthil said Einhorn was upset because "it's difficult to have been released once, spend nine months free, then brought in and arrested and jailed for the same thing."

Residents of Champagne-Mouton say that neither Einhorn nor his wife has been seen around the village in recent months. "They are just like, how do you say, making themselves invisible," said Maria Das, a neighbor and former friend.

Flodin was in the courthouse yesterday as Einhorn made his brief appearance. She declined, as usual, to speak to American journalists but did speak with French reporters.

Einhorn, who still has his long, distinctive white beard, walked quickly through a courthouse hall with police at his side, looking unconcerned. At the closed meeting where he was told about the extradition charges against him, said Defos du Rau, "he was very relaxed, with a big smile."

Both the prosecutor and Delthil said that if Einhorn remains jailed, his extradition case should move faster through the courts. Even if he loses this extradition fight, Defos du Rau said, various levels of appeals could allow him to remain in France for the next year or two.

Einhorn's Philadelphia lawyers, Norris Gelman and Theodore Simon, said that Einhorn plans to fight extradition on the ground that only the court, and not the a legislature, can grant a new trial.
"It's not a good law," Gelman said. "The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has said you can't alter, amend or modify a final judgment of the court. It's clearly unconstitutional."

Abraham agreed that "the court always has the final say on any piece of legislature."

"However," she continued, "it is not bogus law. It has all the force of any other statute."

In the meantime, Abraham said she was not going to ask the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to void Einhorn's 1993 murder conviction "unless, or until, he's here."