Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/475

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 314 (1992)

317

Opinion of Rehnquist, C. J.

Mary Boresz Pike argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief was Arthur C. Helton.* Chief Justice Rehnquist announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part I, an opinion with respect to Part II, in which Justice White, Justice Blackmun, and Justice O’Connor join, and an opinion with respect to Part III, in which Justice Kennedy joins. Respondent, Joseph Patrick Doherty, entered this country illegally in 1982. After more than eight years of proceedings concerning Doherty’s status in the United States, the question presented here is whether the Attorney General abused his discretion in refusing to reopen the deportation proceedings against respondent to allow consideration of respondent’s claims for asylum and withholding of deportation which he had earlier withdrawn. We conclude that the Attorney General did not abuse the broad discretion vested in him by the applicable regulations. Respondent is a native of Northern Ireland and a citizen of both Ireland and the United Kingdom. In May 1980, he and fellow members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army ambushed a car containing members of the British Army and killed British Army Captain Herbert Richard Westmacott. He was tried for the murder of Westmacott in Northern Ireland. Before the court returned a verdict, he escaped from the maximum security prison where he was Civil Liberties Union et al. by David W. Rivkin, Michael W. Galligan, Lucas Guttentag, Steven R. Shapiro, and Carolyn Patty Blum; for Amnesty International et al. by Paul L. Hoffman; for the International Human Rights Law Group by Irwin Goldbloom; for Members of the United States Senate et al. by Carolyn Patty Blum, Kevin R. Johnson, and Joseph K. Brenner; and for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees by O. Thomas Johnson, Jr., Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Julian Fleet, and Ralph G. Steinhardt.
 * Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American