Sheinbein confessed his guilt to his father, Sol. Mr. Sheinbein, a lawyer, encouraged his son to flee to Israel, where he believed Samuel would have citizenship rights owing to Sol's being born there, despite his having left at the age of six. Sol bought him a round-trip ticket to Tel Aviv.
Both the United States and Israel sought Sheinbein's extradition back to the United States for trial. But Israel does not extradite its own citizens to foreign countries for trial, and the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Sheinbein was, indeed, an Israeli citizenship based on his father's birth there.
Sheinbein pled guilty to murder in Israel, agreeing to a 24-year sentence as opposed to the life-without-parole he would have faced in Maryland.
All this, howevever, is background, and the articles linked in the sidebar to this Washington Post article will give you even more.
What was most recently at issue was that the State of Maryland sought to disbar Sol Sheinbein for his role in assisting his son flee from American justice -- and, not surprisingly, the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed.
So? So, take a look at the dissent, starting on page 38. Judges Eldridge and Raker make one of the more interesting arguments I've seen lately -- that the State of Israel had an equal interest in prosecuting Samuel Sheinbein because he was an Israeli citizen, and that, point of fact, if it's okay for Attorney General Ashcroft to choose to try the sniper suspects in Virginia rather than Maryland or D.C. because of the increased likelihood of obtaining a death sentence, it's fine for a defendant to try to be tried in the most lenient jurisdiction possible. Mr. Goose, meet Mr. Gander, writes the dissenting justices:
Thus, the question inevitably arises, in a situation where two sovereigns have jurisdiction over a particular offense, whether an attorney or parent, who has counseled his or her client or child to proceed to the jurisdiction with the lesser penalty, has committed any misconduct? The answer to this question is clearly “No.” Submission to custody in one jurisdiction, whether the result of an attorney’s advice, or a parent’s advice, or the client’s uncounseled choice, or a decision by the Attorney General, necessarily hinders prosecution in the other jurisdiction. Hence, even assuming arguendo that the respondent had sent his son to Israel with the specific intent of opting for Israel’s prosecution over prosecution in Maryland, the action is not criminal. . . .
Indeed, when more than one sovereign has jurisdiction to prosecute a person for homicide, it appears to be entirely appropriate for those on the prosecution side to send the alleged perpetrator to the sovereign likely to impose the most severe punishment. According to the majority opinion, however, it is not appropriate for those on the defense side to send the alleged perpetrator to the sovereign likely to impose a less severe punishment. If prosecutors are free to forum-shop for a jurisdiction with more severe penalties, or a broader capital punishment statute, when choosing where to prosecute the accused, the defense should not be punished for sending the accused to a jurisdiction with less severe maximum penalties.
According to Annapolis defense attorney Gill Cochran, "He got his son a 24-year sentence, which is a hell of a lot better than he would have gotten in Montgomery County. It's what defense attorneys are duty-bound to do. Frankly, it was lawyering at its best."
Is it? There's a certain level of beauty to the symmetry here: prosecutors routinely try to try murder cases in the county most likely to produce a death penalty; plaintiff's attorneys in medical malpractice cases in this region do whatever they can to bring their cases before Philadelphia juries rather than the surrounding counties -- so why not allow criminal defendants to try to game the system themselves?
Except that what's wrong for the goose is what's wrong for the gander as well. The proper answer to forum-shopping by defendants is to prevent its use by plaintiffs and prosecutors: try murders where they occured, in the jurisdiction where they occurred, in the order of when sufficient proof to levy the charges was assembled and presented. Malpractice cases and other personal injury suits? Try them where they happened, and not where the most generous juries are.
I'm all in favor of steps that would reduce the use and abuse of the death penalty and other draconian prosecutorial tools, but this one just leaves a bad taste in my stomach. Maybe yours, too. Does it?
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