Category: crime and punishment

Wife of U.S. diplomat flees UK after killing British teen in a traffic accident; U.S. refuses to waive diplomatic immunity

October 7, 2019 • 10:47 am

Many venues have reported that, on August 27, the wife of an American diplomat in England killed a teenage English citizen riding a motorbike. The woman, Anne Sacoolas (not named in most American reports, but named by Boris Johnson and several British outlets), was apparently driving on the wrong side of the road at the time, hitting and killing the 19-year-old Harry Dunn. The complication is that Sacoolas fled England after the crash and has claimed diplomatic immunity from prosecution. Read about the story here:

Although Britain, including Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has asked the U.S. to lift the woman’s diplomatic immunity, all the news reports, including the NYT above, say that this is unlikely to happen (the US already refused a request for waiver of immunity on September 5), but England is still trying.

Why won’t the US waive immunity? Well, you can read about diplomatic immunity in this Guardian article, which notes that U.S. diplomats and their families are covered throughout the UK by international and UK law. And although these diplomats are urged to obey British law, apparently they don’t have to, and immunity is rarely waived. I’m not sure if every crime is covered, so does a diplomat who, say, murders an English person also get diplomatic immunity from prosecution? Readers who know about these things should weigh in. And does fleeing the country somehow reinforce that immunity, so you don’t get extradited?

In this case, Sacoolas committed what would probably be classified as either reckless driving, negligent homicide, and perhaps failure to report an accident. What she allegedly did was clearly a crime, as the UK police have also asked for Sacoolas’s arrest so she can be interviewed.  The NYT also notes these complicating factors (the emphasis is mine):

The crash, the investigation, and Mr. Johnson’s identification of the American woman could further strain the so-called special relationship between the two countries, which has already been tested numerous times during Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Mr. Trump has engaged in public spats with Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London and endorsed Boris Johnson as a strong candidate for prime minister while his predecessor, Theresa May, was still in office. Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the United States, resigned after leaked cables said Mr. Trump was “radiating insecurity” and his administration diplomatically “clumsy and inept.”

Still, Britain must walk a fine line, most notably because it is hoping to sign a trade deal with the United States after it leaves the European Union, a fraught process that is complicated by the fact that the Americans may make demands the British find unacceptable.

Robert Singh, a professor of politics at Birkbeck, University of London, who specializes in American foreign policy, said that he cannot recall a more serious immunity dispute between the two countries.

He said in an email that while the police could visit the suspect in the United States, such a visit would most likely be of limited value. “This merely seems to postpone the moment of reckoning,” he said. “If she is indeed guilty of the crime, as alleged, then there will be immense pressure upon the U.K. government to initiate formal extradition proceedings — which, one would imagine, any U.S. administration (and this one, in particular) will resist.”

The victim’s parents said they would continue fighting to get justice for their son’s death.

And indeed, this is what irks me about the case. In this case, the U.S. should waive immunity, for the woman is accused of committing a crime and then fleeing the country. It is not a trivial incident, either, like that of the many U.S. diplomats and their families who refuse to pay traffic violations in the UK. Dunn’s parents are devastated and are asking for justice, and I am on their side. Imagine if it were your son, and the alleged perpetrator gets of scot free!

As for that, a SkyNews video revealed that the name of the driver is Anne Sacoolas, 42, whose husband works at the RAF base Croughton, known to be a US intelligence base. The Sky video adds that the U.S. Embassy advised Sacoolis and her family to leave the UK. (I don’t know how the police found her name, or whether she reported what happened to the police).

I don’t think this is what diplomatic immunity was intended to cover. In the interests of justice, the U.S. government, which has the power to life Sacoolas’s immunity, should do so. It’s simple justice.

 

Felicity Huffman given prison sentence (a light one)

September 13, 2019 • 3:17 pm

Actor Felicity Huffman, who pleaded guilty in the college-admissions scandal, was sentenced today to 14 days in jail beginning October 25, along with a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and one year supervised release.

Although this was a compromise between the jail time her own lawyers wanted (none) and what the prosecution requested (a month in stir), the fine is actually $10,000 higher than the $20K asked for by both sides. The prosecution had also asked for a year’s probation, while her lawyers asked for 250 hours of community service.  It looks as if the prosecution got more of what it wanted than did the defense. And I think the sentence is about right, for it shows that nobody, now matter how rich and famous, is above the law.

As CNN reports,

Federal court Judge Indira Talwani said she thinks Felicity Huffman’s punishment is “the right sentence here.”

She also spoke directly to Huffman, saying, “I think you take your sentence and you move forward.”

“You can rebuild your life after this. You’ve paid your dues,” the judge added.

Fellow actor Lori Laughlin must be shaking in her Blahniks, as Laughlin pleaded not guilty to more serious charges, which include mail fraud. If Loughlin is convicted, there’s little doubt that her sentence will be far more serious than Huffman’s, for there’s the “plea tax”.  I wonder if she will change her plea.

As for the other 33 parents and mastermind William Singer, well, American doesn’t care about them as they’re not famous.

This is one case where the reason for incarceration is neither removal from society to prevent danger, or reform  of the guilty party (you can be sure that neither woman will ever do this again). The only valid reasons are to deter others and to reassure Americans that fame and money can’t always buy you a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Felicity Huffman arrives at federal court with her husband William H. Macy for sentencing in a nationwide college admissions bribery scandal, Friday, Sept. 13, 2019, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

 

There’s already a movie on the college admissions scandal

September 7, 2019 • 2:00 pm

Yes, theres a movie, “ripped from the headlines,” and out before even the most famous defendant Lori Laughlin, has been tried, much less sentenced (Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty and will soon be sentenced), while Laughlin pleaded not guilty and is yet to go to trial.)

Were I Laughlin’s lawyer, I’d probably try to get her off based on the movie’s possible prejudicing the jurors. Anyway, here’s the trailer.

As I said, Huffman will be sentenced, and the prosecution has asked for a month’s jail time, a year’s probation, and a $20,000 fine. Her own lawyers want no jail time, 250 hours of community service, and a $20,000 fine. If she goes to jail, it’s a certainty that Loughlin will serve far more time because of her not guilty plea and the more serious charges, which include money laundering.

I’m not sure why, but I feel strongly that both women need to serve jail time. It’s not a case of my enjoying the mighty brought low, I think, but because it involves deceiving institutions dear to my heart: universities. For deterrence of would-be scammers, I believe there needs to be an example made.

As lagniappe, here’s a Saturday Night Live take on the scandal, with Sandra Oh:

Tennessee electrocutes convicted killer

August 19, 2019 • 9:00 am

From the Nashville Scene we learn that there’s just been an execution in Tennessee (why is it always the Red States that execute people?). The details are given in this article in The Nashville Scene (click on screenshot):

The details are horrific, and nobody claims that Stephen West is completely innocent. He did have an accomplice, however, and claims that he was incited by the accomplice. But the crime, in which both killers were found complicit, was horrifying:

Stephen West has been executed in the electric chair 33 years after he was sentenced to death for the 1986 murders of Wanda Romines, 51, and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila, near Knoxville. West, who suffered from severe mental illness, was also convicted of raping the teen, and while he confessed to that crime he maintained that his accomplice stabbed the mother and daughter to death.

The curtains opened at 7:15 on Thursday night, revealing West, who appeared to be crying, sitting in the electric chair. Warden Tony Mays asked West if he had any last words. He responded by referencing scripture.

“In the beginning, God created man,” said West, pausing as he continued to weep. “And Jesus wept. That’s all.”

After West’s final statement, members of the execution team fastened a helmet to his head and placed a shroud over his face. At 7:19, West’s body jolted upward from the chair as the first current of electricity was administered. His body returned to the chair for a matter of seconds, before rising once again with a second jolt of electricity.

West was pronounced dead at 7:27 p.m.

Give the nature of the stab wounds, it’s likely that the killing was prolonged, with some of the wounds meant to torture rather than kill. The lawyers asked for clemency, and two jurors recommended it since West appears to have been mentally ill, but that didn’t stop the electrocution.

In West’s petition for clemency, his attorneys write that then-17-year-old Ronnie Martin had tried to date Sheila Romines and was humiliated when she rejected him. They say Martin coerced West, who was 23 years old at the time, to rape Sheila before Martin stabbed the women to death. The attorneys also note that West was tried first, and that his jury never heard a tape recording of Martin admitting that he was the one who had killed the two victims. They also write that Martin threatened to have West and his then-pregnant wife killed if West didn’t keep quiet about the crimes. Martin ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and is currently serving a life sentence.

Two of the surviving jurors from West’s trial, both of whom had originally voted for the death sentence, told his attorneys they supported clemency in his case. Gov. Bill Lee announced Wednesday afternoon that he would not stop the execution.

There’s a forceful plea to end state-mandated executions in today’s New York Times written by Margaret Renkel:

Her Biblical “Thou shalt not kill” argument, which is simply a diktat without supporting arguments, doesn’t move me as much as other arguments, some of which she makes as well:

There is nothing about Mr. West’s case that would move staunch supporters of the death penalty to rethink their position, but the reasons for ending state-sanctioned murder are manifold: It fails to deter crime; it is far more expensive than life in prison without parole; it is racially biased. Perhaps most tellingly, death sentences are too often dealt to innocent people. Any one of those reasons, by itself, makes a compelling argument for ending executions altogether.

The death sentences given to innocent people is perhaps the most powerful of these arguments. You might say, “Well, we’ll give the death penalty only to people who confess, or whose guilt is absolutely certain,” but confessions can be false, and too often convictions and sentences are based on fallacious eyewitness evidence. But even beyond that, Renkl is right. The death penalty is not a deterrent, it costs more (given the lengthy appeal process) than life without parole, and (Renkl doesn’t mention this), life without parole effectively sequesters the criminal from society forever, so he poses no more danger.

Further, some cases killers can actually be rehabilitated and reformed, and in such cases, however rare, why should they be killed, or even stay in prison forever? There’s some suggestion that West might have been at least partly rehabilitated:

People who knew Mr. West said he had become a different man, and isn’t true rehabilitation justification enough for commuting his sentence to life without parole? As Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty tweeted a few days before the execution, “When an inmate’s severe mental illness is undisputed by the state’s own doctors, what does it take to show that life without parole is the appropriate sentence?”

Remember that even convicted killers like Anders Breivik in Norway, who killed 77 people, get a maximum sentence of only 21 years, and then are reviewed to see if they’ve changed enough to mandate parole.

Further, West appears to have been mentally ill, perhaps severely. That may have contributed to his crime. If he couldn’t help himself (and, in fact, no criminals can), what is achieved by punishment that is certainly retributive? Retributive punishment for crimes that were inevitable—for which the criminal had no choice—makes little sense to me. Yes, it may satisfy the blood lust of the victims’ friends and family, but that caters to our lowest and most primitive emotions.

From the Nashville Scene:

Prison officials have been treating West for severe mental illness for years, giving him powerful antipsychotic drugs that one psychiatrist described in a court filing as “chemical straitjackets.” In an extensive 2002 psychiatric evaluation, Dr. Richard Dudley writes that, in his opinion, West “was suffering from a mental disorder” at the time of the killings that sent him to death row. Dudley also says West’s “mental disorder was of the type that would have been relevant to his defense during the guilt phase of his trial and also relevant as mitigation during the penalty phase of his trial.” West’s mental health was not discussed during his trial.

I should add that electrocution is a particularly barbaric way to kill someone. Yes, if West did torture, rape, and stab the women, his own killings were far more barbaric. But do we have to be as inhumane as those we execute?

Here are some data that Renkl links to in her piece:

Public opinion in the U.S. appears to be against the death penalty:

Finally, out of all the First World countries on the planet, only the U.S. and Japan have the death penalty and use it (figure from Wikipedia):

Is it possible that all of Europe, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Colombia, and many other countries don’t see something that America does? Possibly, but I highly doubt it. We won’t regulate guns, and we execute people. Both bespeak a primitive mentality that needs to be changed.

Jeffrey Epstein commits suicide in jail

August 10, 2019 • 8:45 am

UPDATE: The NYT updated report says that Epstein was on suicide watch, but had been taken off it, though I have no idea why—nor are officials forthcoming about it:

But one federal prison official with knowledge of the incident said Mr. Epstein had been taken off suicide watch a few days ago, and was being held alone in a cell in a special housing unit.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, said guards found Mr. Epstein in the empty cell during morning rounds. He had hanged himself and he appeared to be dead.

It would have been extremely difficult for Mr. Epstein to harm himself had he still been on suicide watch, a second official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.

____________________

This isn’t a real surprise, since I think he tried it once before. (Why wasn’t he on suicide watch?)

Almost surely guilty of rape, sex trafficking, and other crimes (I say “almost certainly” only because of the pre-trial presumption of innocence), Epstein was facing the rest of his life in jail. That might not be intolerable to someone who’s already done hard time, but for someone who’s lived a life of wealth and ease, and was probably facing attacks by other inmates, it was surely the most depressing future he could imagine.

Has justice been done? Probably not for the victims who wanted to have their say, or the many people who thought Epstein should rot in prison until he died. But a major downside of this event is that the trial won’t take place, and we will never know, I guess, who else was implicated in his crimes. A lot of big names have been bruited about.

While I don’t favor capital punishment for any crime, everyone has the prerogative to kill themselves.  As the article below reports (click on screenshot to read it), he hanged himself.

More horror from the Trump administration: federal government to resume executions after a sixteen-year hiatus

July 25, 2019 • 10:30 am

Given the lack of evidence that capital punishment is a deterrent, the fact that it’s more expensive—given the appeals system—than life without parole, the ineluctable fact that innocent people have been executed and, if the death penalty were abolished, they could have been freed, and the fact that capital punishment is barbaric and often painful, it’s a no-brainer that it should be abolished in favor of other punishments. These alternatives could include life without parole (or, as they do in Norway, 25 years with a reassessment for parole). Every first-world country save Japan has abolished capital punishment.

And the federal government hasn’t executed anyone since 2003. Remember that the federal death penalty differs from state death penalties: the former is limited to a narrower range of crimes and is used much less frequently. While 60 inmates are on death row in federal prisons (most in Terre Haute, Indiana), only three have been executed after the federal penalty was reinstated in 1988 (see below). Now, thanks to Trump’s attorney general, they’re set to kill five more. Here are the three executed in the last 31 years.

a. Timothy McVeigh,  executed 2001 for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
b. Juan Raul Garza, Latino male, executed 2001. Garza, a marijuana distributor, was convicted and sentenced to death in August 1993, in Texas for the murders of three other drug traffickers.
c. Louis Jones, executed on March 18, 2003 for the kidnap and murder of a young female soldier.

The Death Penalty Information Center notes this:

The federal death penalty was held unconstitutional following the Supreme Court’s opinion of Furman v. Georgia in 1972. Unlike the quick restoration of the death penalty in most states, the federal death penalty was not reinstated until 1988, and then only for a very narrow class of offenses. The Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 greatly expanded the number of eligible offenses to about 60.

According to many sources, including the Springfield News-Sun and Reuters, the Trump administration has just now re-started these executions.  From the former source:

For the first time in over sixteen years, the federal government will resume using the death penalty, as Attorney General William Barr on Thursday announced that five federal inmates would be put to death for their crimes, with the first execution scheduled for December 9, 2019.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said in a written statement released by the Justice Department.

Five execution dates were announced by Barr for five inmates convicted of murder, starting with Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, who murdered a family of three in Arkansas, and was found guilty in May of 1999.

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” Barr added.

Of course they didn’t have to do this; it’s up to Barr whether these people get executed or not—and when.  I of course favor punishments, and very stringent ones for murder and other horrific crimes. But I don’t favor capital punishment for the reasons I gave above. It’s purely vindictive and offers neither rehabilitation nor deterrence nor rectification of false convictions. I see no reason save vindictiveness to kill someone rather than letting them stay in prison for either life or for a very long time.

Here’s where we stand relative to other nations in our use of government executions. The red ones are the bad ones, and we’re red:

This recent decision bespeaks a lack of humanity, of empathy, and of a failure to realize that criminals had no choice about what they did.

h/t: Ken

Iran executes two teenagers in secret, informs them only the day before

May 1, 2019 • 1:30 pm

According to the Amnesty International article below, Iran just executed two teenage boys for rape after what they say was an unfair trial as well as flogging during detention. The report also adds that the pair didn’t know they were to be executed at most one day before it happened (click on screenshot):

Part of the report:

Mehdi Sohrabifar and Amin Sedaghat, two cousins, were executed on 25 April in Adelabad prison in Shiraz, Fars province, southern Iran. Both were arrested aged 15 and convicted on multiple rape charges following an unfair trial

According to information received by Amnesty International, the teenagers were unaware that they had been sentenced to death until shortly before their executions and bore lash marks on their bodies, indicating that they had been flogged before their deaths. Their families and lawyers were not informed about the executions in advance and were shocked to learn of the news.

“The Iranian authorities have once again proved that they are sickeningly prepared to put children to death, in flagrant disregard of international law. It seems they cruelly kept these two boys in the dark about their death sentences for two years, flogged them in the final moments of their lives and then carried out their executions in secret,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.

“The use of the death penalty against people who were under 18 at the time of the crime is strictly prohibited under international human rights law and is a flagrant assault on children’s rights. It is long overdue for Iranian parliamentarians to put an end to this harrowing situation by amending the penal code to ban the use of the death penalty against anyone who was under 18 at the time of the offence.”

Iran remains the top executioner of children in the world. As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally obliged to treat anyone under the age of 18 as a child and ensure that they are never subjected to the death penalty or life imprisonment.

And, as CNN reports:

According to a 2019 report by Amnesty, Iran is the second biggest executioner in the world after China. It is also the world’s top executioner of juveniles. The rights group recorded the executions of 97 people under the age of 18 between 1990 and 2018.

It’s not clear how Amnesty International got this information, which was not publicized, but perhaps it was through the lawyers or families. The secrecy, though, makes it unclear whether these are just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger number of juvenile executions.

Iran Business Risk gives a chart of execution numbers over several years, and adds this about the method of killing:

Iran executes the majority of convicts by hanging within prisons. The regime, however, also regularly carries out executions in public, including at least 33 in 2016. In many of these cases, the victim is publicly hanged from a construction crane, an especially slow and painful method of execution.

Stoning also continues to be a state-sanctioned form of execution. In 2017, a man and woman were sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.  Other legal methods of execution include firing squad, beheading, and being thrown from a height.

If you can bear it, you can see the hanging of a youth from a crane in Iran on YouTube. Be warned: it’s horrific, for the boy cries for his mother but isn’t allowed to see her. Then he’s raised into the air, which slowly strangles the victim instead of the quicker method of the “long drop” that breaks the neck.

Total from 2005 through 2016 (note that the figure above is for public executions only, and the figure higher up is only for people under 18). This is a lot of killings!

I oppose the death penalty for all crimes, and while I don’t know what age I’d specify for mitigation on the grounds of youth, 17 is pretty close to it. There’s little we can do about this, for protesting to the Iranian embassy will have no effect.

Here are the executed boys (photos from AI article):