Fugitive
The FBI believed that Kopp received assistance in fleeing the US, although Irish pro-life groups denied they assisted him.
Kopp fled to Mexico under an assumed name and later to Ireland. He then fled Ireland one step ahead of police on a ferry to Brittany, France on 12 March 2001, with two Irish passports besides his original U.S. document.
On March 29, 2001, Kopp was arrested by French law enforcement in the town of Dinan, Brittany, just after picking up a package containing $300. The United States requested his extradition. Attorney General John Ashcroft promised that the death penalty would not be sought, handed down or applied, a prerequisite according to the extradition treaty between France and the United States. Ashcroft's promise was made over the objections of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark, both of whom sought the death penalty. Spitzer and Clark argued that the charge of murder was a state charge, not a federal charge, and Ashcroft had no jurisdiction in the matter. The instruction chamber of the Rennes Court of Appeals ruled in favor of extradition. Kopp appealed the ruling.
Read more about this topic: James Charles Kopp
Famous quotes containing the word fugitive:
“Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Perfect Scepticisme ... is a disease incurable, and a thing rather to be pitied or laughed at, then seriously opposed. For when a man is so fugitive and unsettled that he will not stand to the verdict of his own Faculties, one can no more fasten any thing upon him, than he can write in the water, or tye knots in the wind.”
—Henry More (1614–1687)
“Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he’s been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit. And now you play the peevish lover stung by jealously and betrayal. It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)