The big news out of Richmond Thursday evening was that a Richmond circuit court tossed a challenge to Gov. McDonnell’s authority to deny the transfer of convicted double murderer Jens Soering into German custody.
Soering, the son of a former German diplomat, was sentenced to two life sentences for the brutal 1985 slaying of Derek and Nancy Haysom.
For those who haven’t followed the case, here’s a time line. What pops out of the list?
On his last day as Governor, Tim Kaine agreed to send Soering back home, where he would serve his time — not life in prison, but a couple of years.
In short, if McDonnell had not stopped the transfer, Soering would be a free man today.
I interviewed AG Ken Cuccinelli about the case, and asked him what prompted Kaine — who had previously denied Soering’s request for transfer, to agree to it as he was turning out the lights on his term in office. Cuccinelli replied “Lord only knows.” Kaine has waffled, shuffled, and mumbled his way through a series of pseudo-explanations for his last second change of heart, but none of them make sense. Here’s one of Kaine’s attempted rationalizations from last December’s debate with George Allen. The German government had promised Kaine that, if Soering was handed over, he would serve two more years in prison and never be allowed to come back to the U.S.:
“That happened at the end of my term,” Kaine said. “And at that point, with those guarantees, my attitude was good riddance.
“This was a foreign citizen who abused our hospitality and committed a horrible crime. We had the ability to safely transfer him back to his country, where he would be imprisoned on the German nickel and not ours, and at that point and with those assurances I felt sufficient to make a recommendation, knowing the attorney general would review it,” Kaine said.
It’s probably the only time in his life that Mr. Kaine put fiscal concerns ahead of all else. It also rings incredibly hollow.
Soering can still appeal the lower court’s ruling to the Virginia Supreme Court and he has federal appeals options open to him as well.
But for now, he’s serving his time in a Virginia prison for his crimes. Mr. Kaine, meanwhile, has yet to offer the real reason why he decided to let Soering go. Was it a favor to a newly-minted Obama administration? Was it a genuine change of heart?
We have no idea. But Cuccinelli did tell me one thing: had Kaine simply commuted Soering’s sentence, no court, and no subsequent governor, could change or challenge his decision. Instead, Kaine opted for the transfer. Maybe he was hoping all along that someone would bail him out of a bad deal.
But again, we have no idea, because Mr. Kaine refuses to give us a straight answer.
Time to come clean, Tim.
