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Thread: Now that he’s running, Kaine can’t run from Soering decision

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Now that he’s running, Kaine can’t run from Soering decision

    Sixteen months.

    That’s how long former Gov. Tim Kaine has had to cook up an explanation for his attempt – days before he left office in 2010 – to send double-murderer Jens Soering back to Germany.

    It was an astonishing act of gubernatorial nose-thumbing that Kaine reportedly refused to discuss until recently, when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate.

    Yet, after all this time, the best excuse Kaine can muster is that he was trying to save Virginia taxpayers a few bucks.

    “He is not a sympathetic character, that’s true,” Kaine told The Associated Press recently. “I would never grant him clemency.

    “I did feel like Virginians have paid for his incarceration for a very long time – let the Germans pay to keep this guy.”

    Danke schön, governor. But honestly, we don’t mind the cost of keeping animals like Soering behind bars. It’s the price we pay to live in a society with laws. Apparently Kaine’s compassion for taxpayers even extended beyond America’s borders. The AP reminds us that “Kaine secretly agreed to a plan that would have kept Soering behind bars for two years” in Germany.

    Kaine has some serious explaining to do. Perhaps he should hire a new spin doctor before he makes a stab at it.

    Ooops. “Stab” is a poor choice of words. After all, that’s what Soering did to his girlfriend’s parents in 1985.

    For those who’ve forgotten, here’s an abbreviated account: In March of 1985, Nancy and Derek Haysom were butchered in their Bedford County home. After the murders, their daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend, Soer*ing – who met as students at the University of Virginia – fled the country. The duo hopscotched around the globe until they were arrested for check fraud in London the next year.

    Elizabeth returned to America, pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the murder of her parents and was sentenced to 90 years in prison. She has a mandatory release date in 2032, when she’ll be 68 years old.

    The son of a German diplomat, Soering fought extradition. He was finally shipped to the States in 1990 after American authorities agreed that he would not face the death penalty.

    Soering confessed to the near-decapitation of his girlfriend’s parents. Eventually he recanted and blamed Haysom. A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences.

    Because he committed murder in the bad old days before Virginia abolished parole, Soering is a regular at parole board hearings. Yet unless that body collectively loses its mind, Soer*ing will leave prison the way the jury wanted him to: in a casket.

    Soering’s story is familiar to those who know what goes on behind bars. Many convicts steadfastly insist that they’re innocent. Once their appeals are exhausted, they inevitably find Jesus and try to enlist the patronage of gullible religious leaders to lobby politicians to get them out of the big house. Catholic clergy took the bait in this case. Like our present governor, Kaine is a practicing Roman Catholic. Perhaps pressure from the clergy had something to do with Kaine’s inexplicable decision to show mercy to this murderer.

    What Kaine didn’t count on was that his successor in Richmond and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder would work in concert to foil his plans. As soon as he took office, Bob McDonnell asked Holder to stop the transfer. Several months later, the attorney general did just that.

    Earlier this week McDonnell refused to recommend parole for Soering, after a plea to do so from the convict. According to news reports, the governor said he remains convinced of Soering’s guilt.

    Soering’s re-emergence in the headlines is bad news for Kaine, who no doubt would prefer to tiptoe away from his peculiar actions during his last week in office.

    Heck, Soering may have done him a favor. Kaine now has an opportunity to clear the air with the election still 18 months away.

    Even so, it might take an entire team of spin doctors to make any explanation palatable to the public.

    http://hamptonroads.com/2011/05/now-...ering-decision

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Community Viewpoint: Soering Decision Disqualifies Kaine for U.S. Senate

    It was every parent’s nightmare — one with a horribly tragic ending.

    In Bedford County, Derek and Nancy Haysom raised their beautiful and talented daughter, Elizabeth. And after earning top honors in high school, Elizabeth went on to enter the prestigious Echols Scholar program at the University of Virginia.

    During her first year at UVa in 1984, Elizabeth met Jens Soering, a young man from Germany who was attending UVa while his father served as a German diplomat in Detroit. Despite being described by other students as unbalanced and hot-tempered, Soering and Elizabeth began a relationship that soon had Elizabeth’s parents very worried.

    But then the parent’s nightmare became a family and community tragedy.

    “Freaked out” by the Haysoms’ objections to his relationship with their daughter, Soering went to their house on April 3, 1985 — and butchered them. According to police reports, he used a seven-inch knife to stab Mr. Haysom 37 times and Mrs. Haysom six times. His attack was so brutal that he nearly decapitated the couple.

    When Soering’s alibi unraveled, he and Elizabeth fled the United States, where he would have stayed — unpunished for his horrific crime — were it not for the cooperative efforts of Virginia and English law-enforcement officials.

    After an arrest in London for check fraud, Soering was soon identified as the fugitive in the gruesome Haysom murders. Virginia officials flew to England to question him and, satisfied that he was their man, sought to have Soering returned to Virginia to stand trial for his crimes.

    Soering tried everything he could to evade justice. He told a Scotland Yard official that he feared a trial in Virginia would lead to the electric chair because, as he admitted, “You know I killed two people.” He mobilized European officials to oppose his extradition to Virginia because he might face the death penalty here, forcing the U.S., as a condition of winning his return, to agree that Soering would not be put to death for his crimes.

    Despite all the evidence and Elizabeth Haysom’s guilty plea as an accessory to the murder of her parents, Soering still had the audacity to stand in front of a Bedford County judge and claim he wasn’t guilty.

    Fortunately, the jury saw through Soering’s lies and took less than four hours to find him guilty and recommend that he be sentenced to two life terms in prison.

    Not yet done, Soering spent the next 15 years taking advantage of every step in Virginia’s judicial system and wasting countless taxpayer dollars. He appealed his conviction to the Virginia Supreme Court. He then appealed to a federal judge. He brought his case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. And he petitioned the Campbell County Circuit Judge. All of these delay tactics were denied, after which he sought and was denied parole time and time again.

    But the tragedy of this story sadly doesn’t end there.

    On his last full day as Virginia governor, Tim Kaine quietly asked the U.S. Department of Justice to allow Soering to return to his native Germany — where he might serve as few as two years in prison.

    That’s right. Despite being convicted of savagely murdering the Haysoms, and after wasting time and money with numerous delay tactics, Soering was about to get his wish and avoid the punishment he’d been given for his heinous crime.

    Instead of sitting on death row or living out his remaining years in a cell from which there is no escape, Soering would be able to sit in Germany, free and clear.

    All because of one man — Tim Kaine.

    Fortunately, Gov. Bob McDonnell took swift action to keep this travesty of justice from occurring. Just three days after succeeding Kaine, McDonnell rescinded Kaine’s request and told the Department of Justice Soering would be staying where he was — in prison.

    Why would Kaine let a convicted double-murderer avoid serving two life sentences for the murders he committed? That’s what a lot of Virginia residents and lawmakers have been asking.

    According to Kaine, he did it because he didn’t expect to run for office again. As he told The Associated Press, “I frankly thought that I wouldn’t see my name on a ballot again.”


    Think about that for a moment.

    Kaine’s reply reveals two very important things: First, it reveals that Kaine knew the people of Virginia would oppose Soering’s release. And, second, it reveals that he didn’t care all that much because he didn’t plan on ever asking Virginians for their vote again.

    But now he is. And he’s hoping we’ll forget what he did.

    As a retired federal agent and a current Virginia law-enforcement officer, I can’t forget what Kaine tried to do. Like my fellow men and women in law enforcement, I took an oath to protect the citizens of Virginia from harm — including the evil that Soering brought into the Haysoms’ home that night in 1985.

    I take that oath more seriously, it seems, than Kaine did.

    And that’s why I am proud to strongly support George Allen to serve as Virginia’s next U.S. senator. Unlike Kaine, George Allen recognizes that protecting Virginia families is a core responsibility of anyone who wishes to represent them in office. It is something that must inform every decision they make — not just if they’re planning to run for elected office.

    That’s why Allen led the successful push to abolish parole in Virginia when he was governor. It’s why he has made fighting and punishing crime a top priority. And it’s why he has the support of over a hundred law-enforcement officials throughout the commonwealth.

    When Kaine tried to let Soering, a vicious criminal, return to Germany to serve two years — not two life sentences — he showed us that he does not take our justice system seriously and he’s the wrong man to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate.

    Let’s keep that in mind this November.

    Brown, a supporter of Republican U.S. Senate candidate George Allen, is sheriff of Bedford County.

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Tim Kaine loves touting his Catholic faith. But it could bite him in the VP debate

    Tim Kaine personally opposes the death penalty, the moral stand of a staunch Roman Catholic who regularly attends Mass and whose church believes executions to be wrong.

    Yet as governor of Virginia, the Democratic vice presidential nominee allowed the execution of 11 men.

    The death penalty is part of a political tightrope Kaine has walked for almost two decades, trying to balance his Catholic faith with policy positions that are at odds with the church’s teachings. He also personally opposes abortion, for example, but supports the right of women to choose to have one.

    That intersection – or collision – between faith and politics could be a significant part of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate between Kaine and Republican Mike Pence, a devout evangelical Christian and former Catholic whose faith also has defined major points of his career.

    And as Kaine’s record shows, some of those collisions could make for tricky politics in the debate. (Pence’s faith and career will be covered in a separate article.)

    The biggest flashpoint is abortion.

    Like many religious Democrats, Kaine acknowledges his personal opposition but says the state should not restrict a woman’s right to choose.

    That’s not enough for some Catholics.

    “Kaine has found a way to finesse the tricky dance of being a Catholic in politics today in the Democratic Party,” said Brian Burch of Catholic Vote, a conservative group that is not officially associated with the church.

    “When you peel back the curtain you see nothing more than a power-seeking Democratic politician that is willing to sacrifice his own faith and his own personal beliefs for power and prestige.”

    The voting record of Kaine, a senator since 2013, has been perfectly in step with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, two groups that advocate for expanded abortion protections.

    “He’s completely out of step with the Catholic Church,” said Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association, a group that opposes abortion.

    Catholic Democrats in the Senate like Kaine outnumber Catholic Republicans by 16-11. Vice President Joe Biden also is Catholic.

    Like most liberal Catholics, Kaine most closely follows the church on issues such as help for the poor and support for immigrants.

    “He has decided that the political arena is a way of actually forging your values into a kind of activism, social activism that can make a difference,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., a fellow Catholic and friend.

    They claim freedom to ignore the church on public issues such as abortion or gay marriage.

    “It’s the Kennedy defense,” Connolly said of Democrats who are devout Catholics. “I’m not running as a Catholic politician; I’m running as a Catholic who is a politician.”

    Connolly, who attended Catholic seminary for six years and frequently talks with Kaine about their faith, recalled a visit to the Virginia governor’s mansion when Kaine served as the state’s chief executive.

    He noticed a book by German anti-Nazi dissident and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Kaine’s nightstand. Connolly said Bonhoeffer mirrored Kaine’s religious philosophy because he was a “theologian and also a man of action.”

    “The social justice doctrine of the Catholic Church is a really integral part of our lives, trying to help people who are less fortunate,” Connolly said. “Try to leave the world a better place than you found it.”

    If the social justice part is easy, Kaine has walked the tightrope on other issues.

    Before entering politics, he defended death row inmates as a civil rights lawyer. But when his Republican opponent for governor attacked him for his defense of death row inmates, Kaine countered that he would support state law despite his personal and religious objections.

    “I really struggled with that as governor. I have a moral position against the death penalty,” Kaine said in 2012. “But I took an oath of office to uphold it. Following an oath of office is also a moral obligation.”

    Other Catholic governors found ways to rein in executions while in office. Maryland Democrat Martin O’Malley upheld a moratorium on executions in 2007, a year after Kaine took office.

    Kaine, who as an attorney once struck white jurors from a trial because of their race, to ensure a better defense for his black client, allowed 11 executions during his four years in office – six of them black men.

    Virginia ranks third in the country for number of executions since 1976.

    Connolly acknowledges the challenges of mixing religious beliefs with politics. But he said Catholic Republicans had their own moral inconsistencies when it came to certain policy issues, notably curtailing immigration and budget cuts to social programs that helped the poor.

    “We can’t allow ourselves to be politically blinded by one dominant value,” Connolly said. “There’s a multiplicity of values that need to be addressed.”

    He said Pope Francis had “thrown the doors wide open” to allow Catholic politicians such as Kaine to choose their own approaches to complicated policy issues.

    Conservative Catholics largely agree with that sentiment, except on the issue of abortion.

    “The example of the way he (Kaine) behaved as governor and the way he supports abortion are examples of political cowardice,” Burch said, adding that Catholic politicians need to show “respect for all persons regardless of stage of development or age.”

    Conservative Catholic organizations have less of an issue with the death penalty, which goes against Catholic teaching but is supported by Republican nominee Donald Trump. Burch’s group initially opposed Trump during the primaries and has not formally endorsed him.

    “On the scale of the issue there is no comparison,” Burch said. “We’re talking about tens of millions of children versus a tiny number of difficult cases.”

    Kaine has never lost an election in his political career but he faces national scrutiny after Hillary Clinton chose him as her vice presidential pick.

    “He’s a helluva nice guy,” said Virginia state senator and lieutenant governor candidate Bryce Reeves, a Spotsylvania Republican. “Tim Kaine, until recently, has not been a grenade thrower. He’s not the guy who’s going to poke you in the eye. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.”

    http://www.newsobserver.com/news/pol...#storylink=cpy
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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    GOP ad eviscerates Tim Kaine for defending accused rapists, murderers

    Coming off of a rocky presidential debate and a brutal weekend full of leaked tax returns, the Republican Party is hoping for a big win Tuesday when Gov. Mike Pence debates Sen. Tim Kaine. By all appearances, the GOP is going to come out swinging — they have already released a ruthless takedown of Kaine, who once worked as a defense attorney.

    The ad lists a number of Kaine's former clients, including Richard Lee Whitley, who was convicted of murdering his 63-year-old neighbor. "Something personal in me will die today, too [when Whitley dies]," the ad quotes Kaine as saying. It also highlights his defense of Lem Tuggle, who was found guilty of raping, sodomizing, and murdering a woman, and the double murder for which Jens Soering was sentenced to life; Kaine had approved Soering's transfer to a more-tolerant Germany.

    While Pence will likely follow such a line of attack at the debate, Kaine will be bracing for the criticism as he's faced it from political opponents before, Roll Call reports. In 2005, Kaine was targeted in ads from his Republican opponent that featured Stanley Rosenbluth, the father of a murder victim whose accused killer was represented by Kaine. "Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty," Rosenbluth accused in what became a highly-criticized ad; Kaine went on to win the election.

    http://theweek.com/speedreads/652643...ists-murderers
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    FBI agent joins Soering pardon case

    BY LAUREN BERG
    The Lynchburg News and Advance

    A retired FBI agent has thrown his professional weight behind the pardon case for Jens Soering, the German national convicted of the brutal murder of a Bedford County couple in 1985.

    And new evidence of a once-lost FBI profile — presented at a news conference in Charlottesville on Monday — points to a female killer who knew the family intimately.

    On April 3, 1985, Derek and Nancy Haysom were found dead in their Lynchburg home — their throats cut from ear to ear and their bodies extensively mutilated by knife wounds four days earlier. In 1990, the couple’s daughter, Elizabeth Haysom, was found guilty of being an accessory, while Soering, her boyfriend at the time, was convicted of both murders. They were both University of Virginia honors students at the time of the killings.

    Soering is serving two life sentences. Haysom is serving a 90-year sentence but will receive mandatory parole in 2032, when she is 68.

    Stanley Lapekas, a retired special agent with the FBI, became involved with the case about six months ago, after working on another wrongful conviction case with Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding, who is spearheading the unofficial Soering investigation. But criticizing the work of other law enforcement officers — however long ago — is never a comfortable task, Lapekas said in a recent interview.

    “I look at this to try to identify things that are possibly new or just ‘glow’ and make me say, ‘Something isn’t right here,’” he said.

    And a few things stood out for the retired agent.

    First, Lapekas found it odd that there was a disagreement between the original investigators as to whether the FBI conducted a psychological profile of the killer. Major Ricky Gardner, with the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office, contends a profile was never done, but in an interview before he passed away, FBI Special Agent Edward Sulzbach spoke about the profile he completed at the request of the sheriff’s office, just days after the crime scene was discovered.

    Retired Bedford County Investigator Chuck Reid also remembers a profile being done, and that he does not understand why Gardner would deny its existence. For the first six months of the investigation, he said, detectives focused on a female suspect.

    But then Soering confessed to the crime and the six months of work was “thrown out of the window,” Reid said. Evidence was spun to fit Soering’s story, rather than investigated for the truth, he said.

    Gardner did not return calls for comment.

    Lapekas filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI to try to find any mention of such a profile. A couple of the documents he received do mention some redacted information from the profile — identifying the possible suspect as a white female who is “very closely related to the victims” — but the actual profile report was not found.

    In 1985, the Richmond FBI office was a pilot location for the bureau’s efforts to switch from paper to electronic filing. As a result, Lapekas said, it’s possible some documents got lost in the shuffle.

    And it may never have been a written report, he said, but the information was definitely relayed to then-Bedford County Commonwealth’s Attorney John Updike because he mentions it in a letter and a rough draft affidavit to the attorney of a woman who was considered a suspect in 1985. The woman was the ex-fiancée of Haysom’s brother, who reportedly blamed their parents for the broken engagement.

    “Moreover, Special Agent Edward F. Sulzbach of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who is trained in the field of compiling profiles of criminal suspects, viewed the scene and the evidence gathered during the investigation and stated that the suspect was female and knew the victims,” according to the affidavit.

    The woman eventually was eliminated as a suspect, but the profile was never introduced at trial or brought up by Soering’s defense, according to Harding.

    “It was buried,” Harding said.

    ***

    The second piece of evidence that caught Lapekas’ eye was the bloody sock print that the prosecution used to tie Soering to the scene.

    In the psychological profile, Sulzbach determined the print matched a woman’s foot with a shoe size of 6 ½ to 7 or a small man’s foot, size 5 to 6. Soering is a size 8 ½ to 9, according to Harding, who said the shoe size likely matched that of Haysom.

    At the trial, a tire impression expert testified that the print matched an overlay of an inked impression of Soering’s foot.

    “In my opinion, that is basically junk science and no better than a cheap magic trick,” Lapekas said.

    Other than that, and some Type O blood found at the scene that prosecutors said belonged to Soering, there was no other physical evidence linking him to the scene. And since a DNA test was done on the remaining blood samples in 2009, Soering was eliminated as a contributor of that blood — striking any physical evidence tying him to the scene, Lapekas said.

    Speaking candidly, Lapekas said he wants to get to the truth of a case, even 30 years on. Since the DNA testing was done, a question has been raised that there might have been one or two unidentified men at the crime scene.

    “I would want to immediately turn over all the physical evidence for re-examination,” Lapekas said. “There’s no harm in doing that. The upside is it would give you peace of mind that you’ve done everything you possibly can to resolve any unknown suspects.”

    Lapekas also questioned the Bedford County’s investigators’ decision to focus on Soering when the evidence did not really match up to his story. With Soering telling one story and Haysom telling another, he said it should have been the first priority to sort out which story held the most water.

    “When you have an obvious false confession somewhere, you should go out of your way, at that point, to shore your case up,” Lapekas said. “But that wasn’t done, apparently. They just went with what they had.”

    “I’ve never seen a crime scene like this,” he added. “I mean, it just shocks the conscience. The anger that was displayed at the crime scene went beyond murder. At every thrust of the knife, there was a message behind it.”

    ***

    While Harding, Lapekas and others continue their investigation, Soering remains in the Buckingham Correctional Center.

    “They’re stealing my life away,” Soering said in a recent interview. “I didn’t do this.”

    Sitting at a conference table in a cinderblock room, just a few paces away from the prison warden’s office, Soering pulls out half a dozen hefty binders. Each tome consists of the documents and evidence collected to bolster his pardon request.

    And Soering knows it all back to front and sideways. There’s not a lot to do in prison, he said, except to try to help his own case.

    In February, Soering was denied parole for the 14th time. Even though officials from Germany threw their support behind him at his parole hearing and offered to take him home, the one-page letter Soering received on Feb. 23 was straightforward.

    The letter said he was being denied parole because of the serious nature and circumstances of the crime.

    “While this may not be the answer you hoped for, please continue your hard work,” it said.

    But he can always apply again, every year.

    Adrianne Bennett, chairwoman of the Virginia Parole Board, which also is in charge of pardon investigations, confirmed to Virginia Public Radio that the investigation of Soering’s case is ongoing and has been since April 2016. She said the “constant flow of new information” has contributed to the lengthy process and that other pardon requests have taken years to complete.

    Bennett could not be reached for comment by press time.

    The board typically receives 15 to 25 pardon requests per week, officials said. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe never had a chance to look at Soering’s case and it now falls to recently elected Gov. Ralph Northam.

    “I’ve been fighting so long and so hard,” said Soering, who has now been locked up for almost 32 years.

    When he talks about his false confession, Soering shakes his head at his younger self. He said he was never trying to cover up a crime; he was trying to save Haysom from the electric chair. If Virginia didn’t have the death penalty, he said he never would have done it.

    “It was not a good decision,” Soering said. “But at the time, my intention was for moral reasons. I was trying to be a good kid in my own stupid way.”

    http://www.newsadvance.com/news/loca...6f9d50fb6.html
    In the Shadow of Your Wings
    1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!

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