Jens Söring's Good Luck with Lawyers, Part I
Jens Söring has enjoyed talented and loyal legal representation. Many of his lawyers have supported his innocence claims.
Housekeeping: Sorry about the last post, which was a bit cryptic. Those who know, know.
Now: Welcome to Part I of a series of posts about Jens Söring and his lawyers.
But first, since the fine folks at a certain Hamburg law firm are known to scrutinize every one of my posts (hello there!) I have some disclaimers for you! Don’t you love them?
Disclaimer 1: Nothing in this post constitutes an allegation of any form of misconduct whatsoever by any of Jens Söring’s lawyers. Every action by every lawyer mentioned in this post was, to my knowledge, legitimate, proper, and in keeping with applicable ethical codes. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a lawyer claiming that his or her client is innocent (or not liable) of accusations made against them — in fact, this is often a sign of zealous advocacy, exactly what lawyers are supposed to provide their clients.
Disclaimer 2: The focus of this blog, as always, is not so much on any particular lawyer or journalist, but rather on how the German media in general have reported on the Söring case (at least until recently). Söring’s lawyers have played a prominent role in helping him amplify his innocence claims, both in the USA and in Germany.
There, that should do it. Now to the post:
Jens Söring has had good luck with his lawyers. Many become his friends (or close to friends), and go the extra mile for him. Söring, in turn, is eager to broadcast the fact that lawyers are willing to publicly endorse his innocence claims, just as he recently boasted in this German-language interview that “five” police officers endorsed his innocence. When ordinary citizens say Söring is innocent, the audience might think: ho-hum. When lawyers say he’s innocent, viewers might think: this person has reviewed his claims and found them persuasive. Lawyers may not have the greatest reputation, but at least they’re experts. A good example can be found on the back of Söring’s 2021 book (g) “Return to Life”, which bears a quotation from John Grisham calling Söring’s case “shocking”. Söring lawyer Gail Marshall says that in her entire career, she has only had two clients she believed were innocent, and Söring was one of them.
But have these lawyers actually reviewed all the evidence, both pro and con? Are they sincerely convinced Söring is innocent — or merely that he might be innocent, or that he wouldn’t be convicted if tried again? Here we encounter the second advantage of lawyer endorsements of Söring’s innocence (after the prestige factor) — many of these lawyers have represented Söring. This means that they cannot (or can at least legitimately decline to) answer some of those questions. Reporters usually won’t press lawyers on the ins and outs of their relationship with a client, since they understand that some questions may be off-limits because of attorney-client privilege.
Let’s look at an example. We’ll return to the episode of the German TV show "Johannes B. Kerner” from September of 2007. Kerner, a famous German talk show host, personally flew to Virginia to interview Jens Söring in prison. Kerner then played and discussed the interview with three studio guests in a September 2007 of his eponymous TV show. Söring’s German lawyer Prof. Dr. Andreas Frieser1 was a studio guest, as was Söring’s American lawyer Gail Marshall, and a German pastor. Frieser is still a partner of the Bonn, Germany law firm of Redeker, Sellner, and Dahs. He began representing Jens Söring in 1986.
Frieser’s role as an invited studio guest in the Johannes Kerner TV show is interesting. It also highlights a typical problem with German press coverage of Jens Söring’s case: Interviewers, including Kerner (who otherwise did a good job), never mention all of Jens Söring’s confessions in 1986. They may briefly mention that Söring “at first confessed” to the murders, but then retracted the confessions. They never mention how many times or to whom Söring confessed. This leaves audiences with an inaccurate idea of how deeply Söring implicated himself in the Haysom murders. The conversation between host Kerner and attorney/guest Frieser shows how this tactic leads to confusion.
The Kerner TV show starts out with a short montage of the previous history of the case. The only mention of Söring’s confession is the 4-word phrase “Söring confessed the crime”. Then Kerner introduces Frieser as “the attorney from Bonn who, with his legal team, is fighting to have Söring transferred to Germany”. Kerner then turns to Frieser and asks him the very first question of the interview:
Here’s my non-official English translation:
Kerner: And we talk to Jens Söring's German lawyer, Dr. Andreas Frieser. Good afternoon, Mr. Frieser. Dr. Frieser, is Jens Söring innocent or guilty?
Frieser: [00:04:02] A court ruled more than 20 years ago that he was guilty. At that time, I had visited him in extradition custody in the in the United Kingdom in London. And he confessed to the crime. For me, he was, at that time, guilty. I ran into him again 20 years later, due to a private-law dispute I fought out for him. And he has asked me to help him, in a criminal matter, in the extradition process, the prisoner-transfer process. And I then read, first of all, the things that [Söring attorney Gail] Marshall brought up in the States, in her attempt to win a new trial, and since then, contrary to my first conviction and my first impression, as I said, a confession, after all, I have been convinced of Mr. Söring that he is innocent.
Kerner: [00:04:50] Why does this case still pre-occupy you? What makes the case so remarkable?
Frieser: [00:04:54] It is a completely atypical prisoner, a man of high intellectuality, a reflective man, a man who has written five books during his imprisonment. Therefore completely untypical. It’s a case that has raised an incredible number of legal issues, as you mentioned. The European Court of Human Rights created, if I can put it that way, the well-known case of Söring, a judgment which is famous with international law experts, in connection with his extradition. The United States was not allowed to impose the death penalty because of that decision of the European Court, and it still raises big questions today, not about guilt or innocence, but in the context of our attempts to get him [transferred] to Germany, under a treaty which is very rarely applied.
For the typical viewer who knows nothing about the case, Frieser’s answers must have raised a few questions: Why was Frieser in London in 1986? What is this “confession” by Söring he’s referring to? How did Frieser know about it? The viewer isn’t provided with answers to any of these questions.
The viewer doesn’t learn, for instance, that Frieser didn’t just learn that Söring had confessed. He was right there in the room listening to Söring’s confession. On 30 December 1986, Frieser traveled to Chelmsford Prison in Essex, UK, where Söring was in custody pending extradition to Virginia. Frieser was there to represent Söring. Frieser was allowed to meet with Jens Söring privately for 20 minutes. After this private consultation, Frieser joined Bernd König, then a prosecutor in the Bonn, Germany prosecutor’s office.
Together, they listened as Söring confessed in detail to murdering Derek and Elizabeth Haysom. That confession was recorded, transcribed, and translated into English. You can read it here. It was a key element of the prosecution’s case against Söring. I don’t want to be too hard on Kerner, who is the only German journalist who questioned Söring’s (even gingerly) story before 2019 or so. However, he should have given his audience more background here, especially by mentioning that Frieser was there in the room when Söring confessed (for the 4th time).
The Questions Nobody Ever Asks Söring’s Lawyers
Frieser makes an interesting remark in the answer quoted above. He says that he initially believed Söring was guilty, because he had listened to Söring’s confession. (Incidentally, the other lawyer in the room during that confession, former prosecutor Bernd König, recently said he had “no doubt” that Söring’s confession was genuine.)
Kerner never asks Frieser some fairly obvious follow-up questions, such as: What was so convincing about Söring’s confession that you thought he was guilty? When did you stop believing Söring was guilty, and why? Do you believe Söring’s own innocence story — i.e., that Elizabeth Haysom killed her parents, and Söring only confessed to protect her? Have you read the transcript of Söring’s 1990 trial, including his cross-examination?
All relevant questions which, unfortunately, went unasked. One reason, of course, is that answering some of these questions could conflict with Söring’s attorney-client privilege. Even if Kerner had wanted to ask these questions, he might have been disinclined, out of politeness, to force Frieser to invoke attorney-client privilege on television.
What does the record tell us?
How might Frieser have answered these questions? Only he can answer that, of course. But the timeline of the case raises some interesting questions. According to Söring himself, in his 1995 ebook “Mortal Thoughts”, just a “few weeks” after the 30 December 1986 interview with Frieser and König, his lawyers (he never identifies them or mentions whether Frieser was one of them) came to visit him in prison, presumably sometime in January 1987. He describes the conversation:
Hesitantly I asked the attorneys what my legal position would be if I were not guilty?
My lawyers' eyes immediately widened in horror: Heaven forbid the possibility of my innocence! To have any hope at all of gaining a binding assurance that the death penalty would not be imposed, it was essential to maintain my complete guilt throughout the extradition proceedings. If we conceded that I might have a defence against the murder charges, the appellate judges would rule that I needed no binding assurance, because an innocent man would presumably not be convicted and executed anyway. The legal term for this was "the necessity of proving the 'seriousness of risk' of execution," the attorneys explained.
So if I wanted to live no one could know that I had not killed the Haysoms. Even then I could not help but smile at the poetic irony of my position: my innocence, if it became known, would kill me!… The truth came gushing out of me at the earliest moment that it was safe: a few days after the final extradition hearing before the European Court of Human Rights…
This is Söring’s attempt to account for one of the fatal weaknesses in his story: Why did he only proclaim his innocence during his trial in June 1990? Why is there no public record of him ever telling anyone he had confessed falsely and was actually innocent before his 1990 trial?
Can we really be expected to believe he didn’t even tell his own lawyers that he was innocent?
Later during the TV special, Kerner asked Söring what he told his family members when they visited him in prison. Söring answers this question differently depending on when he’s asked it. This time, in 2007, he responds: “Die Wahrheit.” (“the truth”). In Söring’s universe, this means that Söring told his own family members that Elizabeth Haysom killed her parents, and that Söring was innocent and had only confessed to protect her. Yet his family never contacted Söring’s lawyers and said “Our son/brother is innocent! Why aren’t you trying to prove this?”
Why?
Söring knows these questions threaten his entire narrative, so he came up with the explanation given above: My lawyers said I cannot protest my innocence! From a practical, common-sense, and legal perspective, this story is nonsense, as I’ve pointed out before.
But the problems don’t stop there. Let’s look at the timing of Frieser’s statements in the Johanes Kerner interview. Frieser says that from December 1986 onwards he believed Söring was guilty, until he began reading some of the claims Gail Marshall made in her appeals. Gail Marshall filed the habeas corpus petition for Söring in 1995. This timing raises two more fatal problems for Söring’s innocence claims. Here’s a timeline to help you keep it all sorted out:
Problem one: As Söring states in “Mortal Thoughts”, the first time his lawyers warned him to shut up about his innocence was “a few weeks” after he had confessed on 30 December 1986. Thus, presumably, Söring felt free to tell Frieser, in their 20-minute private consultation 3 weeks before this time, that he, Söring, was preparing to confess falsely to save Elizabeth, not because he was actually guilty.
In Söring’s version, on 30 December 1986, he didn’t yet know that protesting his innocence would be tantamount to signing his own death warrant. So, did he warn Frieser during their 20-minute conference that he, Söring, was about to give a false confession? If so, then why doesn’t Frieser come out and say this? I.e., why doesn’t he say on TV: “Jens Söring told me on 30 December 1986 that he was about to confess falsely to protect Elizabeth, but swore me to keep this secret. After June 1990, however, when he made the fact of his false confessions public, I was able to confirm the truth of Söring’s claims, since he had told me the exact same thing on 30 December 1986.”
Or, on the other hand, Söring may have had a completely normal conference with his lawyer on 30 December 1986. That is, Söring said to Frieser: “I’m about to confess to the murders of the Haysoms, as I’ve done three times previously. The point here is to convince Germany to file charges against me in Germany, so that I can be tried there. Now let’s please discuss some of the things I should and shouldn’t say during this confession — especially about the knife, and premeditation and intent.” That would be a completely normal conversation between a guilty, confessing client and his lawyer. And when you read Söring’s confession, his reluctance to talk about the murder weapon and premeditation jumps off the page.
Version 1 is very odd, version 2 is the kind of lawyer-client conversation which takes place dozens of times a day in prisons everywhere. Of course, we’ll never know which version actually took place unless Söring releases Frieser from client confidentiality.
The second problem is also puzzling. Söring took the witness stand and claimed his innocence in June 1990. It’s pretty much inconceivable that Frieser, who was likely representing Söring at the time in some capacity, did not know this. After all, the confession Söring gave in Frieser’s presence was introduced at Söring’s trial and helped convict him of murder. How could he have remained ignorant that his own client had disowned the confession Frieser himself had listened to for hours?
So assuming Söring’s version of events is true, as of June 1990 at the latest, Frieser should have been convinced that Söring had been unfairly convicted. After all, Söring had taken the witness stand and told the jury that he only confessed in December 1986 to protect Elizabeth. At this point, Frieser could have come out publicly and said: “I now understand that my client Jens Söring was innocent all along. He only confessed in 1986 to try to save Elizabeth. That plan succeeded; she is safe from the death penalty. Now he is revealing the truth: That Elizabeth Haysom, not he, killed Derek and Nancy Haysom.”
That’s what Frieser could have, and perhaps should have concluded in 1990, if Frieser genuinely believed Söring’s innocence claims. After all, what more proof could have have needed? His own client had testified under oath that he was innocent. Yet instead Frieser waited 17 years to finally proclaim in public his belief that Jens Söring may be innocent. Why the delay? Why did he first need to read Gail Marshall’s legal pleadings — filed in 2005 five years after the trial — to conclude his client was innocent? Wasn’t his own client’s word enough? When exactly did he become convinced of Söring’s innocence, and why?
We’ll never know the answer to these questions unless Jens Söring signs a waiver of the attorney-client privilege for Prof. Dr. Frieser. After Söring releases Frieser from the duty of confidentiality, Frieser can resolve all these confusing questions. Frieser can also release his notes from the 30 December 1986 interview. Frieser can also speak freely about when he became convinced Söring was innocent, why, and whether he still believes Söring is innocent right now.
Söring got the benefit of having a respected German lawyer endorse his innocence claims before a TV audience of millions (which, to repeat, was in no way improper), but did not have to reckon with that lawyer being asked any of the awkward questions raised in this blog post.
And Söring won’t ever have to reckon with that, unless he signs a waiver of attorney-client privilege. Will he do it?
For non-German readers, a note about these titles. Law school in Germany is an undergraduate degree; students start right out of Gymnasium (high school) at around age 19. A law degree takes about 4-5 years and is followed by apprenticeships. Students who want to enter academia or who want to add considerable prestige to their law degree can pursue a doctorate in law.
The standards for German law doctorates are looser than those for a standard Ph.D. in an American university, but still reasonably demanding. The student must conceive of, write, and publish an original scholarly book, usually between 150-300 pages long, and defend its thesis. There have been many scandals in Germany involving students buying doctoral titles from compliant professors or submitting plagiarized dissertations, but there is no indication that Frieser’s title is anything but legitimate.
Frieser’s professor title is likely an honorary one. If practicing lawyers compile a long record of teaching at a particular law school, and publish frequently, they can apply for an honorary professor title. This is considered an honor among German lawyers — it shows that they are not only capable practicing lawyers, but that they have also made contributions to the law at a theoretical or scholarly level as well.
So all in all, Prof. Dr. Andreas Frieser is an outstandingly well-qualified lawyer.
I think that Frieser is not a stupid man. In 1986 he was convinced that Soering is guilty cause of his confession and the "general" rule who says to be a killer is the killer. But Frieser pointed out that he had realized some points of GM's arguments. But Frieser isn't interested in discussing the point guilty or not guilty. His job was to realize Soering's transfer from the US to Germany which is based on a legal contract between the US and Germany. Don't forget that in 2010, that had almost happened, if..... Frieser is motivated by the ethical idea of a second chance for a German convicted killer. Frieser mentioned only once that he thinks that Soering might be not guilty in a camera, cause there is no proof for him being at the crime scene. That is a legal opinion. In contrast to your conviction, Frieser don't know what had happened in that murder night. And so the Jury didn' t know that either. My persuation is that they did it together. Imagine what you might have to change in your writing the past 2.5 years according to this version. 😁