Fugitive’s return to U.S. could be an ordeal

SPOKANE – Longtime fugitive Frederick Russell has finally been captured, but now comes the possibly even more arduous job of extraditing him from Ireland to the United States to face criminal charges in Whitman County.

Ireland has refused most extradition requests from the United States in the past two decades, and it was unclear if Russell would be returned to Washington to be tried on three charges of vehicular homicide and four counts of vehicular assault.

“The Irish government is certainly a stickler for procedure,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Hopkins, who is involved in the case. “There are no guarantees.”

Hopkins predicts the process could take years.

Russell was arrested Sunday, four years to the day after he fled the United States, at a store in Dublin. He reportedly is in an Irish jail.

He made a court appearance on Tuesday to be advised that the United States was seeking his extradition, and a bail hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, said Scott Malkowski of the U.S. Marshals Service in Spokane.

A former Washington State University student, Russell was charged in a 2001 crash that killed three people and injured four others on Highway 270, the two-lane road that connects the college towns of Pullman and Moscow, Idaho.

Accident reports said Russell was driving an SUV at about 90 mph and trying to pass other vehicles when he struck three cars the night of June 4, 2001. All the dead and seriously injured were returning from a movie in one car.

Authorities learned from an Irish tipster in January that Russell was in Dublin. But the task of preparing a 160-page packet requesting his arrest took months, Hopkins said.

The packet was largely the work of Whitman County deputy prosecutor Carol LaVerne.

It required a detailed narrative of the events leading to the charges against Russell, copies of state laws involved, and affidavits from surviving victims, witnesses, law enforcement officers, doctors and anyone else with involvement in the accident and its aftermath.

Many of those people had to be brought into courtrooms as far away as Baltimore to make sworn statements, Hopkins said. They were not told their testimony involved an extradition, because authorities did not want to leak the news that Russell had been found, he said.

After that, the packet had to be processed by Irish officials and an order signed by a judge before the arrest could occur.

Families of victims say their relief that Russell has been captured is tempered by fears they may not ever see him in a U.S. courtroom.

“That makes me a little sick,” said Karen Overacker of Wapato, mother of Brandon Clements, one of three people killed in the crash. “I would be very, very surprised if he doesn’t fight it.”

Even worse is the prospect that Russell will be released on bail and could disappear again, she said.

“It’s just going to kill me if that happens,” Overacker said.

Family members of the three who died and the three most seriously injured students have already talked about mounting a campaign to pressure the U.S. government to demand Russell’s extradition, she said.

The United States and Ireland have only had an extradition treaty since 1984, when it was negotiated by the Reagan administration.

Douglas McNabb is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney whose firm specializes in extradition cases. He doesn’t believe the Russell case poses any special challenges.

There is nothing in the treaty that would appear to make Russell’s case difficult unless he is married to the woman he was living with in Ireland, McNabb said. That could complicate the case.

Russell’s status as an illegal alien in Ireland should also make it easier to extradite him, McNabb said. Hopkins said Monday there is no record that Russell legally entered that country after flying to England.

But others noted that Ireland has rejected most extradition requests from the United States since the treaty was signed.

Hopkins said Monday that the past 18 extradition requests from the U.S. have been rejected. None has been granted since 1999.