In the Press...
Asbury Park Press Op-EdSMITH: Defiant killer still free 52 years laterThe week of Thanksgiving is often a difficult time for the daughters of Walter Patterson, who was attacked on Nov. 23, 1962, at his Wall gas station and died two days later, Nov. 25. Those sad anniversaries are made worse because they know that their father’s killer, George Wright, lives freely and defiantly today in Portugal. In recent years I have been pushing the Obama administration to ramp up efforts to seek extradition of American fugitives who have taken refuge in other countries, with Wright and JoAnne Chesimard, who killed New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in 1973, at the top of the list. Both committed grisly murders in New Jersey, were convicted and sentenced, escaped prison and now live openly abroad, out of reach of our justice system. Walter, a World War II hero and Bronze Star recipient, was brutally beaten and shot in the 1962 robbery. Wright was captured, tried, convicted and sent to prison. Justice seemed to be served. Unfortunately, he escaped from Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, Cumberland County, in 1970 and fled the U.S. in 1972 by hijacking a commercial jet. The FBI painstakingly tracked him down in 2011, but Portugal refused to extradite him, declaring it had granted Wright citizenship. Wright gave a gloating media interview, claiming “I really should be a role model of rehabilitation.” Foerster was shot and killed on a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. Chesimard was convicted and sent to prison. She broke out of Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in 1979 and made her way to Cuba, and has lived there ever since as an honored “guest” of the Castro government. Wright and Chesimard are emblematic of why we need to bring fugitives back to the United States. In 2011, Patterson’s daughter, Ann, testified at a Capitol Hill hearing I chaired on Wright’s unjust freedom and the efficacy of the U.S. extradition process. Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Winer also testified and said that the Portuguese judge’s refusal to extradite Wright to the U.S. was “legally indefensible” under international principles of extradition law. Current Justice Department officials admitted to me that its “data management system cannot readily specify the number of (extradition) requests presented to a foreign country in a given time period.” Even more troubling, they claim that their system does not maintain a central repository for information on rendition requests — or their status. Similarly, the U.S. Department of Justice seems extremely reluctant to discuss not only the Wright and Chesimard cases, but even to provide basic information on the extradition system and whether it is working. In other words, American family members are basically left on their own to pursue information and justice for a relative whose killer has outrun U.S. law enforcement. To address this unfairness and garner more support for surviving family members, I have introduced the Walter Patterson and Werner Foerster Justice and Extradition Act. This bipartisan legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Albio Sires, D-N.J., would for the first time require the president to report annually to Congress on the number of American fugitives residing in other countries; a list of the countries harboring U.S. criminals; efforts made by the U.S. government to secure a return; the number of resolved cases; and factors that have been barriers to resolving cases. Armed with this information, Congress would be able to exercise its oversight responsibility to ensure that federal agencies work more effectively with and on behalf of surviving family members like the Pattersons. Both Patterson and Foerster were violently murdered and torn away from their families. In the name of justice, we owe it to the victims — and their surviving family members — to aggressively pursue extradition of convicted murderers and return them to U.S. prisons for the completion of their sentences. Chris Smith is a Republican congressman who represents New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District.
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