Extradition of Suspect to U.S. ‘Vetoed’ : Rights Court Says West German Could Face Death Penalty

The European Court of Human Rights ruled today that a West German accused of killing two people in Virginia should not be extradited to the United States because he could receive the death penalty.

The court said the threat of the death penalty is a violation of Jens Soering’s human rights. Soering is being held in Britain.

Rulings by the court do not technically bind the members of the Council of Europe, but they are rarely ignored. Britain said it will study the ruling.

Court officials called the judgment a landmark ruling.

Jim Updike, the Bedford County, Va., prosecutor heading the case against Soering, said the decision is “illogical.” “He is guilty of the extremely brutal murder of two human beings,” Updike said.

The court said if Soering is found guilty in Virginia, he faces years on Death Row and capital punishment. Such punishment would breach his rights under the European Human Rights Convention, it said.

Article 3 of the charter says: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

State’s Promise Discounted

The court said a promise by Virginia justice officials to ask the courts to spare his life if he is found guilty was insufficient because it “did not eliminate the risk of a death sentence.”

Soering, who moved to the United States in 1977, was charged in the March 30, 1985, fatal stabbings of William and Nancy Haysom in their Bedford County home. They were the parents of Elizabeth Haysom, his girlfriend at the time. She is serving a 90-year sentence for her part in the killings.

The Haysoms were slain in an argument over Soering’s relationship with their daughter, which the parents opposed.

Soering evaded arrest in Virginia but was arrested in Britain in April, 1986, on a check fraud charge. In 1988, Britain agreed to extradite him, but Soering took his case to the human rights court, an arm of the 23-nation Council of Europe.