Innocence Project – C-VILLE Weekly

‘Blot’ on justice: Nelson Mandela counsel believes Jens Soering’s innocence

The former UVA Echols Scholar convicted for the 1985 murders of his girlfriend’s parents has gotten another prominent supporter. Former Canadian minister of justice Irwin Cotler, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and who was an attorney for political prisoners Nelson Mandela and Natan Sharansky, was in town March 5 and says he thinks Jens Soering is wrongfully imprisoned.

Cotler says he was talking to Innocence Project founder Jason Flom and mentioned an upcoming visit to UVA law school. Flom told him about Soering, whom many believe is innocent of the horrific murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom in their Bedford home, particularly since new DNA analysis from blood at the crime scene indicates that other previously unidentified people were there, but not Soering.

Soering, a German citizen, has long claimed he confessed to the crime to protect then-girlfriend Elizabeth Haysom from execution. He says Haysom told him she’d killed her parents, and he mistakenly believed he would have diplomatic immunity if he confessed to the crime.

He’s been in prison almost 33 years, and his case has been an international cause célèbre, with Germany calling for his repatriation and then-governor Tim Kaine agreeing to do so, only to have Bob McDonnell reverse the okay when he took office in 2010.

Cotler first became involved in wrongful convictions with the case of Steven Truscott, who was convicted of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl when he was 14. Cotler reviewed the evidence, and “I came to the conclusion there had been a miscarriage of justice,” he says.

After looking at the Soering case, “It struck me it had all the markers I’ve come to appreciate as the indicators of a wrongful conviction,” he says, listing false confession, inadequate attorney representation, and junk forensic science.

“It was a classic case of a wrongful conviction,” he says, and a “compelling case, which cried out for injustice that needed to be redressed, having gone on for 35 years.”

Cotler joins a prominent and growing array of Soering defenders, including bestselling author John Grisham and actor Martin Sheen, who wrote a letter to the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this year calling for Soering’s release.

Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding, who launched his own investigation of the case with a number of other cops, came to the conclusion Soering was innocent and wrote then-governor Terry McAuliffe that the evidence supports Soering’s innocence and that if tried today, he would not be convicted.

Cotler, who is an honorary member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, spent two hours with Soering at the Buckingham Correctional Center. “I was very much taken by his remarkable demeanor,” says Cotler of Soering, who has written 10 books while in prison, has been denied parole 14 times, and has never had an infraction during the more than three decades he’s been incarcerated.

“He doesn’t bear any rancor or desire for revenge,” says Cotler, who notes that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years before becoming president of South Africa, and taught that country “the importance of reconciliation.”

Soering has “a real feeling for what justice is all about,” says Cotler. “I hope his freedom will allow him to make the mark he has made in prison.”

A German documentary, Killing for Love, was released in 2016 and supports Soering’s innocence. And in an interview for the film, Elizabeth Haysom said her mother had sexually abused her for years, which experts like Harding say would be a motive for the murders.

Soering’s attorney Steve Rosenfield filed a petition for pardon in 2016 with the governor’s office, where’s it’s languished. A call to the secretary of the commonwealth, which handles pardons, was not returned, nor was a message to Governor Ralph Northam’s office.

Cotler is hopeful investigators for the governor and the parole board will resolve the matter and free Soering. The case, he says, “is a blot on the criminal justice system as a whole.”

Jason Flom on rock ‘n’ roll and getting the innocent out of prison

Lava Records founder Jason Flom could be the most successful recording executive of this era. But it was his other great passion—for justice—that packed the Paramount at the Tom Tom Festival Founders Summit April 15.

Flom, who said he lost his virginity at a Yes concert when he was 15, launched mega-performers like Katy Perry, Lorde and Kid Rock. He recalled his father telling him, when he balked at finishing college, “Do what you want to do. Just make the world a better place.”

In 1992, he heard about a kid serving serving a 15 years-to-life sentence for cocaine under the harsh Rockefeller drug laws in New York. “I decided to get involved,” he said. “I had my own history of doing drugs. There but for the grace of God….”

Even his own attorney told him nothing could be done, but at Flom’s expense, the attorney got a hearing and the man was freed. “That was so profound,” he said. And that launched his own criminal justice advocacy with Families Against Mandatory Minimums and The Drug Policy Alliance and he was a founding board member of the Innocence Project.

A week ago, Virginia’s latest exoneration was Keith Harward, who walked out of prison after 33 years for a murder and rape he didn’t commit, convicted on the “terrible forensics” of now-discredited bite mark evidence, said Flom. DNA evidence proved he was not the murderer, and 40 percent of exonerations show who the real criminal was, said Flom. In Harward’s case, the real perp was a serial rapist who went on to attack again (he died in prison 10 years ago).

“That never needed to happen if police had done their job,” Flom said.

He noted that the United States locks up more of its citizens than any country—ever. “If another country did to our people what we do to them, we’d bomb them,” he said.

One thing that could get a half million people out of jail now would be cash-less bail, because it’s poor people who can’t make bail, said Flom. That’s being done in Washington, D.C., where people are only charged bail if they don’t show up in court, and it’s working there, he said.

Flom advocates legalization of drugs, starting with marijuana, and points to Portugal as a model. “Here we have people in prison for life for pot,” he said.

“My philosophy is harm reduction,” said Flom. “Drugs are always part of society.” He cited mass incarceration as part of the harm, and suggested letting the punishment fit the crime in instances when someone else is hurt.

Flom called those exonerated by the Innocence Project “the luckiest of the unlucky people in the world,” and said he got into work with that organization because, “I can’t imagine anything worse than being locked up for something you didn’t do.”

Between 4 percent and 7 percent of all people who are in jail are innocent, said Flom earlier Friday at the “Exoneration as Innovation in Our Legal System” luncheon. He also wondered why prosecutors are never prosecuted in the cases of wrongful convictions.

At that event with UVA’s Brandon Garrett, who wrote Convicting the Innocent, Deirdre Enright with UVA’s Innocent Project Clinic and who was involved in the hit podcast, “Serial,” Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding, who’s tried to launch a justice commission in Virginia to eliminate police practices that lead to wrongful convictions, and Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the Supreme Court for Slate, participants noted that “Serial” and “Making a Murderer” have piqued the public’s interest in the innocent being incarcerated.

Advocacy, money and lawyers are needed to make change, said Flom, because it’s unlikely to come from politicians.