Soering resolution questioned, approved by Senate subcommittee

RICHMOND — A resolution that would oppose the transfer of convicted murderer Jens Soering to a German prison had a narrow escape Tuesday after running into its first opposition in the General Assembly.

The Democratic chairman of a Senate Rules subcommittee raised a question about legislators trampling on governors’ prerogatives when it considered the resolution, sponsored by Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg.

The measure (SJR 149) would tell the U.S. Department of Justice that the Assembly does not support the Soering transfer, which was recommended by former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and is being fought by Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Debate in a 7 a.m. meeting of the Senate Rules subcommittee was not openly partisan, but it was the first time a Democratic member of the Assembly has spoken up to defend the transfer Kaine proposed during his final week in office.

“Have we ever done anything like this?” asked Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke. Edwards is chairman of the three-member subcommittee, which operated Tuesday with a two-member quorum, both of them Democrats.

“This is an executive prerogative,” Edwards said. “The General Assembly really has no role in this matter.” While the resolution would express “the sense of the General Assembly, it has no deciding effect” with the Justice Department, Edwards said.

Newman replied that the Assembly hasn’t opposed an executive action similar to the one Kaine took in asking the federal agency to transfer Soering out of a Virginia prison.

But Kaine’s method of seeking the transfer was unusual, Newman said.

Kaine did not use his constitutional powers to commute Soering’s two life sentences or pardon him, Newman said. “I don’t think the legislature should trample on any of those executive authorities” of pardon and clemency, Newman said.

“This is not a constitutional power that we are infringing upon,” Newman said, because instead of using those powers, Kaine “sent an administrative application to the Department of Justice.”

Newman added that the legislature has less than 30 days before the Justice Department is likely to act on the transfer request.

The subcommittee sent the resolution forward to be considered by the full Rules Committee only after its second member, Sen. Phillip Puckett, D-Tazewell, made a motion to approve it.

“This is a pretty difficult spot for me to be in,” Puckett said. “I mean no disrespect for our former governor, but I can’t help but think this is the right thing to do. I don’t think anyone who is familiar with this case would think this ought to be happening,” Puckett said.

Soering was convicted in 1990 in the brutal stabbing deaths of Derek and Nancy Haysom, his girlfriend’s parents, in their Bedford County home.

His former girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, is serving 90 years in prison as an accessory in the deaths.

The case drew international attention because of Soering’s status as the son of a German diplomat, and because of the couple’s flight to Europe when Bedford County authorities began to focus the investigation on them.

After Puckett’s motion, Edwards agreed to send the resolution to the full committee.

“I have some reservations about whether this is the right approach,” said Edwards, who, as a U.S. attorney in Roanoke in the 1980s, handled an extradition of a Danville-area man who was serving a sentence for murder in Germany.

“I don’t know what was in the governor’s mind” when he proposed the transfer, Edwards said, adding that “I don’t know whether he should be transferred to Germany or not.”

Edwards said his reservations rose from the transfer’s being proposed at Virginia’s executive level by Kaine, and from McDonnell’s action to revoke it the following week in a letter he sent to the Justice Department.

Newman said there has been no response from the Justice Department on the two gubernatorial letters.