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‘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.”

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Writer tax: County is all business in targeting freelancers

In an area crawling with writers, it’s a well-known fact: Unless you’re a John Grisham or Jan Karon, the odds of being able to pay the rent by writing are pretty low. Nonetheless, that hasn’t deterred Albemarle County from requiring a $50 business occupational professional license—and collecting it for the past five years, with interest and penalties.

A slew of local writers, among other Virginia Department of Taxation Schedule C filers, were recently hit with notices that they need the license if they earned more than $5,000—and if they make more than $100K, they have to pay a percentage of gross receipts.

National Book Award winner Kathy Erskine was one of those taxed. “The shocking thing was to learn I need a business license to be a writer,” she says. “It’s not intuitive for writers and artists to know they’re a business.”

Erskine received plenty of publicity when she won the National Book Award for Mockingbird in 2010, “so it’s not like I’m hiding,” she says.

She had to pay back taxes for five years—plus interest and penalties. And because she had an unusually good year after winning the award, she had to pay a percentage of her gross receipts. “Not net,” says Erskine, which meant she couldn’t take off her expenses for travel or advertising.

Erskine also learned she had to have a home business license, which requires a $27 one-time fee.

“I never would have guessed—it’s so crazy—that when I’m sitting at my kitchen table writing, I would need a license,” she says.

Vampirina Ballerina author Anne Marie Pace also was dinged by the county. “I don’t have a problem with taxes in general because they go to roads and schools and things I value,” she says. “It seems a little odd to me that it seems to be coming out of the blue.”

That’s because Albemarle’s finance department has hired two full-time business-tax auditors, according to director Betty Burrell, and the notices are the result of the auditors “fulfilling their job responsibilities” and following something called the audit work plan.

Burrell points to county code, which has a lengthy listing of business purveyors who must have licenses, and although writers don’t show up on the list, they’re still defined as a “business service,” explains Burrell in an e-mail.

[Disclosure: In the course of reporting this story, this reporter also found a notice in her mailbox, presumably sparked from making $6,971 from freelance writing while unemployed in 2014.]

At press time, the county had not responded to questions about its decision to collect license fees from five years back, except for this in an e-mail from the county attorney’s office: The authority to collect taxes and fees is outlined in county code. “Thus, Finance is administering tax collection, not making ‘decisions’ to collect.”

Nor had Albemarle shed light on whether anyone who isn’t a W-2 salaried employee is expected to have a business license, how much it expects to collect from the combing of Schedule Cs and how much the new auditors are getting paid.

“I think they shouldn’t charge five years back,” says Pace. She says she didn’t have the money in her business budget and had to use personal funds to pay the $250 tax bill.

“It’s an unpredictable income,” she says. “I can work and not make money. I got a $4.77 royalty statement the other day.”

Charlottesville, too, requires a $35 business license for anyone making less than $50,000. However, it doesn’t actively seek out an artist who made $200 and filed a Schedule C on her taxes, according to Commissioner of Revenue Todd Divers.

“The juice has got to be worth the squeeze,” says Divers. “I don’t know how much it’s worth with our workload. We do check Schedule Cs occasionally.”

Good news for buskers in the city: They are not required to have a license. “If they’re taking donations,” says Divers, “they’re not charging. They’d be playing anyway.”

Not everyone taxes its creative folk. In Ireland, the first 50,000 euros writers, composers and artists make is exempt.

Local writer Janis Jaquith says she didn’t make enough to be on the county’s hit list, and calls the tax regressive. “It doesn’t seem fair when the little guy has to pay more,” she says.

“If you want to be a freelance writer, it’s like taking a vow of poverty,” she adds.

“This is the county squeezing the lemon tight,” says Neil Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum. “I understand they’re looking for money everywhere.”

Williamson thinks taxing based on gross receipts is “stupid” and the business occupational professional license should be eliminated.

Says Williamson, “This is what business-friendly looks like in Albemarle County.”

Correction 11/3/16: The caption omitted the word “home” in the type of business license Kathy Erskine obtained for a one-time $27 fee.