The "Diplomatic Immunity" deception exposed by...Jens Söring himself

Jen's Sörings own statements from 1985 prove he never actually believed he had diplomatic immunity.

As part of a special research project, I recently dug deep into my archives on the Jens Söring case. I thought I knew the case well, but it turned out that there were things that even I hadn't stumbled across, or had simply forgotten. In the next few blog posts, I will discuss some of these aspects of the case in depth.

Let's start with the issue of diplomatic immunity.

Söring's story

By now we all know Jens Söring's version: He confessed to the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom to protect their daughter, Elizabeth Haysom. Why? Because, Söring claims, she personally stabbed her parents to death, and confessed this fact to him. He promised to confess to the murders to protect her. He believed he wouldn’t face the full consequences for this confession because he was the son of a diplomat.

Here’s a typical claim, from page 68 of his 1995 eBook “Mortal Thoughts”, in which Söring tells Elizabeth:

And you won't have to go to the electric chair. And me, I'll get diplomatic immunity, at least partially. I'm a diplomat's son, right? I've got a German diplomatic passport with a U.S. diplomatic visa.

Söring’s claim was reported as fact in almost every article on the case.

The journalists who reported this claim as fact didn’t do their jobs. If they had, they would have encountered the many fatal flaws in Söring’s story — including, for instance that (1) diplomats’ children are always bluntly warned, by both their home country and the host country, that they cannot rely on diplomatic immunity to protect them against prosecution for serious crimes; (2) Söring never once mentioned the word “immunity” during his 1986 confessions (during which he repeatedly told detectives he was “terrified” of being executed), and (3) The British and American detectives who questioned him in June 1986 explicitly warned Söring that he would be extradited to Virginia and face a potential death sentence, pegging the likelihood of this outcome at 90%.¹

Those are all good reasons to believe Söring is lying. But there’s an even better one:

Jens Söring himself told police he knew he never had diplomatic immunity.

The October 6, 1985 Interview

It’s October 6, 1985, five months after the murders. Söring is still in the USA. Investigators Ricky Gardner and Chuck Reid have invited Söring to talk with them at the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office. At this point, neither Söring nor Haysom are suspects. However, Gardner and Reid have questions. For one thing, when they met with Elizabeth, she couldn’t explain the 419 extra miles on the rental car’s odometer. Now they want to see if Söring can explain this anomaly. They also want to ask him why he has refused their requests for a blood sample and finger- and footprints.

The interview was recorded with Jens Söring’s permission, then transcribed and presented as evidence at Söring’s 1990 murder trial. As we know, a week after this interview, Söring cleared his bank accounts, wiped his fingerprints off his apartment and car, and began his international flight from the law.

Gardner and Reid wanted to know why Söring refused to give police a blood sample and finger- and footprints despite numerous requests. Söring’s answers are long and rambling and full of indiscreet revelations, which I will discuss in later posts. Also, time permitting, I will publish the entire 6 October 1985 interview in both English and German.

Why wouldn’t Söring give physical evidence? Söring’s long-winded argument boils down to the following: If he gave police his fingerprints, that would mean he might have been some kind of “suspect” or witness or person of interest in a murder investigation. This fact, in turn, could jeopardize his residency status in the United States. For example, he could be required to notify the U.S. State Department that he is some sort of suspect/person of interest in a murder case, and the Department could take action against him, perhaps by even deporting him. Also, it could hurt his father’s diplomatic career if Söring becomes some kind of suspect or person of interest in a murder investigation. To sum up: I can’t give you my fingerprints because I’d get harassed or even deported, and could ruin my father’s career. I’m totally at the mercy of the U.S. State Department.

None of this makes any sense, as Gardner and Reid noted, but Söring did his best to convince them.

Söring's statements on diplomatic immunity

During the discussion of these issues, Söring made the following comments, taken from the verbatim transcript entered into evidence at Söring’s trial on June 5, 1990 (emphasis added by me):

"Okay, now the state department has the right to actually deport me for as much as like a speeding ticket, they can do that okay and they keep files on this sort of thing, so that if you do enough things which the state department doesn't like, they will deport you okay. (p. 55)

"Right now, I, I don't think that y'all think you know I, I, did it [i.e., murdered the Haysoms], just because I'm a foreigner okay. Um. Unfortunately diplomatic immunity is something that you know that is long past, unfortunately, I guess." (S. 84)

What does Söring mean when he says that diplomatic immunity is “long past”?

A little background research clears this right up.

An ancient law gets a much-needed update

In the 1970s, there were several high-profile scandals in the United States involving foreign diplomats who committed crimes or misdemeanors on U.S. soil and subsequently claimed diplomatic immunity. Even I remember some of this debate.

The problem was this: in the 1970s, the law on diplomatic immunity in the United States dated back to 1790! (22 U .S.C. §§ 252-54 (repealed in 1978)).

The House of Representatives way back when

The 1970 law granted universal, blanket immunity to all diplomats, meaning they could not be required to appear in court to answer any charges. That was a pretty broad grant of immunity even in 1790. For more on this law, follow the footnote.²

Of course courts chipped away at this grant with common-sense exceptions, but still, this was a very broad law. And some of the lower sort of foreign diplomats on US soil exploited it, as this law journal article notes:

The problems under the 1790 law drawing the greatest attention involved traffic accidents, parking and traffic violations, realty disputes, and nonpayment of bills…. Traffic accidents caused by members of the diplomatic community in which extensive personal injury or property damage occurred were of particular concern, since often the victims were left without compensation or remedy….

In one such accident in April 1974, the Panamanian Cultural Attache negligently ran a red light and collided with the car in which Dr. Halla Brown, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Allergy Clinic at George Washington University, was riding. Dr. Brown was rendered a quadraplegic [sic] and incurred expenses totalling over $200,000 for treatment. The Panamanian Embassy and Government refused to make any indemnification until October 1977 when it settled the dispute with an ex gratia payment of $100,000.

The issue became so controversial that in 1977, Congress held public hearings to determine whether a new law was needed. The verdict: yes. An article from 1978 in the Michigan Journal of Law Reform described the consequences:

In response to public criticism and increasingly strained relations between diplomatic missions and neighboring communities, Congress recently passed legislation that fundamentally changes the right to diplomatic immunity in the United States.  This law removes the complete immunity from criminal and civil proceedings granted to most foreign diplomats and their staffs, and establishes the rules of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as the measure of diplomatic immunity in the United States.

This new law was the Diplomatic Relations Act of 1978, Pub. L. No. 95-393, § 7, 92 Stat. 809 (1978). This landmark piece of legislation — the first new law on diplomatic immunity law passed in the U.S. in 188 years — arrived just one year after Jens Söring arrived in the United States. The law overturned the broad 1790 grant of immunity and said that, from now on, the United State of America would grant foreign diplomats only the immunity they were entitled to under international treaties; i.e., the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963, which the United States had ratified on 24 November 1969.

As a teenager, Jens Söring was a well-read diplomat’s son with an interest in politics. It is therefore inconceivable that Söring did not know about this landmark law, which of course directly affected him and his family. Söring also knew, of course that his father was a consul. Thus, the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations didn’t apply to Söring’s father, because that law only applies to high-level diplomats, not consuls. Any immunity for Söring through his father would have to come through the Vienna Convention on Consular relations.

And could Jens Söring be eligible for immunity through that law? No. Article 43 (1) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations states: “Consular officers and consular employees shall not be amenable to the jurisdiction of the judicial or administrative authorities of the receiving State in respect of acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.” (emphasis added).

Families of consular officials can share in their immunity, but of course they’re not entitled to more immunity than the consul himself or herself; and the consul’s immunity only extends to “acts performed in the exercise of consular functions”. Let’s say a consul hosts a party for local business leaders at his home. His wife bakes some cookies but doesn’t tell the guests they contain nuts. An allergic guest gets sick and sues. The consul’s wife may enjoy immunity (derived from her husband) here, since she was engaged in “acts performed in the exercise of consular functions”.

But does consular immunity extend to Söring’s murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom? Not unless they were carried out “in the exercise of consular functions”.

I think we can safely rule that out.

The official State Department guide to diplomatic and consular immunity for US police and prosecutors — the same type of written instructions and warnings provided to all foreign diplomats in the USA — sums up the situation:

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations grants a very limited level of privileges and immunities to consular personnel assigned to consulates that are located outside of capitals. There is a common misunderstanding that consular personnel have diplomatic status and are entitled to diplomatic immunity…. Absent a bilateral agreement, the family members of consular officers enjoy no personal inviolability and no jurisdictional immunity of any kind. (emphasis added)

The “common misunderstanding” applies to people unfamiliar with diplomatic issues, like an Atlanta cop called to a fistfight involving a consul’s son. Nobody who makes a living as a full-time diplomat or consul — or their family members — is any doubt about whether they enjoy immunity. And especially not the intellectually gifted and well-read Jens Söring, who, as his own words reveal, had researched the issue and knew the truth — there was zero chance he could ever claim diplomatic immunity for the Haysom murders.

This means that Söring’s claim (unveiled, by the way, only at his 1990 trial) that he mistakenly thought he had diplomatic immunity is demonstrably false. He knew all along that he didn’t.

And yet Söring still repeats this debunked claim at almost every opportunity, and journalists often repeat it without checking it. That’s poor journalism.

One other note: Söring found it so "unfortunate" that the 1978 law excluded any possibility of immunity for him that he twice mentioned how “unfortunate” this state of affairs was.

I think we can all imagine why he was so disappointed.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this post, please subscribe and recommend to anyone you think may be interested. There’s so much more to come!

1. “Beever: Would you think there is a ninety percent chance [you’ll be tried in the USA]. The fact that the crime was committed in America, and you have an American D.A., and an American investigator here, you would, you would think was a very good chance that the authorities would go for extradition to the U.S.A, in this case? If you were charged, or if proceedings were were started, you understand that?

Soering: Yes, I understand the question. I, I didn't know there was a D.A. here.”

Commonwealth v. Soering, June 6, 1990 (transcript of interview from 6 June 1985, p. 31.)

2. Here is § 25 of the “Crimes Act of 1790”, in all its feathered glory:

[I]f any writ or process shall at any time hereafter be sued forth or prosecuted by any person or persons, in any of the courts of the United States, or in any of the courts of a particular state, or by any judge or justice therein respectively, whereby the person of any ambassador or other public minister of any foreign prince or state, authorized and received as such by the President of the United States, or any domestic or domestic servant of any much ambassador or other public minister, may be arrested or imprisoned, or his or their goods or chattels be distrained, seized or attached, such writ or process shall be deemed and adjudged to be utterly null and void to all intents, construction and purposes whatsoever.

Crimes Act of 1790, § 25, 1 Stat. 112, 117–18.

In other words: “If any US government (state or federal) charges a diplomat or his ‘domestic or domestic’ servant with a crime — or if a private person sues them in a civil lawsuit — any order to force them to appear in any American court to answer the claim is utterly null and void.”

Utterly, I tell you! Now that’s what I call diplomatic immunity! You could point at the plenipotentiary from Moravia, accuse him of pilfering your patent loom-spindles, and even hurl your gauntlet at his fashionable jockey boot, but you could never drag him into court.