Republicans are calling for Sen. Tim Kaine to respond on his efforts to send a convicted murderer out of the country in 2009, when he was governor of Virginia.
According to Virginia state delegates
speaking to Politico, the Democratic vice presidential candidate hasn't answered Republicans' questions on his attempt to transfer Jens Soering, convicted for killing the parents of his girlfriend Elizabeth Haysom in Virginia in 1985, to his home country of Germany.
Soering, who is serving two life sentences, would have been able to receive parole after two years in Germany.
According to The Washington Post, he requested the transfer, and Kaine agreed as one of his last acts in office. His successors, Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, both denied Soering's transfer requests.
"Gov. Kaine knew that this effectively meant this double murderer was going to get released," Gilbert said about Kaine's efforts. "Sen. Kaine has never given a good answer. Certainly saving the taxpayers money is not a good answer when you're talking about a brutal double murderer. So the question is: what was his reasoning?"
"After receiving assurances from the German government that Jens Soering had been convicted to a life sentence in Germany, and would never be allowed to enter the U.S. again, then-Governor Kaine recommended the Department of Justice consider transferring him into the German penal system where his own country could pay for his life imprisonment rather than Virginia taxpayers. He has had no involvement in the case since January 2010," Kaine's spokeswoman Amy Dudley told Politico.
Soering, the son of a German diplomat, fled the country with Haysom after the murders, but the two were arrested in England.
In 2012, during McAuliffe's campaign for governor, his opponent, Virginia's then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, brought attention to an affidavit signed by Kaine in 1988, which Soering's lawyers were trying to use to prevent his extradition to the United states from the United Kingdom.
"What I find most shocking is that he [Kaine] was a witness on behalf of a double-murderer to help keep him from being extradited to Virginia, or at least to keep us from having available the death penalty in this case if he were extradited," Cuccinelli said,
according to The Roanoke Times.
Soering and Haysom were eventually extradited to the U.S. on the condition that the death penalty would not be sought.
"Members of the national press corps ought to be asking Kaine about the Soering matter every day — at least until the veep hopeful from Virginia comes up with a sensible explanation for why he tried to set this man free," said Kerry Dougherty,
columnist at The Virginian-Pilot.
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