An American charged with murder in Tonga in connection with his wife’s death has been released from prison in Hawaii after the U.S. State Department refused to extradite him because of concerns he would not have received a fair trial.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson exercised his discretion in denying the Kingdom of Tonga’s request to extradite Dean Jay Fletcher for trial in the South Pacific archipelago nation, according to a letter to U.S. prosecutors from the State Department.

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Allen S. Weiner, the director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law, called the case “a little unusual” because the U.S. has an extradition treaty with Tonga.

Countries usually avoid signing extradition treaties when they have doubts about legal systems, he said.

Fletcher’s case is also unusual because it is usually other countries that do not want to extradite their citizens to the United States when the death penalty is a possibility, Weiner said.