The appeal court has ruled in the Camilla Broe case

The appeal court has finally stopped the case against Camilla Broe.

She is cleared of all charges.

It is time to reflect. TV2 stated that the DEA first approached the Danish department of justice with the request that her case should be tried at Danish courts. For some reason the Danish department of justice declined the request and asked the DEA to try her in the United States.

It is history but let us play with the idea that she had been tried in Denmark. In Denmark the statutes of limitation are 10 years for such crimes instead of 5 years in the U.S. The trial would have been a possibility and then the outcome would be difficult to predict, but the court would have ruled in the case.

Why would the outcome be difficult to predict? One of the persons who have commented on a previous entry has investigated when the other persons in her case were released. The result of his research was that they were released the minute they support the 10 charges against Camilla Broe. It didn’t matter that they had not served their time – not even close. Some of them served as little as 30 percent of the time they were sentenced to.

All were released during 2007 as direct result of the negociations between the DEA and the Danish department of justice went forward.

Had they taken her case before a Danish court, her case would look very similar to another case against three Danish businessmen who exported furniture. They were arrested out of the blue when some smugglers claimed that parts of the furniture had contained drugs. The police did never suspect the Danes. In fact their names came on the table long after the U.S. Criminals had started to serve their time and started to look for a method to have their sentences reduced. They have now been in Denmark to testify and enjoyed conditions in our prison which are considerable better than the standards they are used to over in the United States. A nice holiday in exchange for reduced time with no risk of being charged for perjury at foreign court. It sounds like a deal you cannot afford to say no to. The Danish court is still trying to decide if they will believe the testimonies from Captain America as the American smuggler is named.

So much for might have been.

Now they instead have to face that a number of states will question the extradition process. I saw this headline:

Camilla Broe drug case highlights flaws in Danish extradition law, IceNews

And it is justified to ask if you should ask questions before you accept the so-called evidence from a foreign justice system. Denmark is in the process of outsourcing our extradition laws. The blog “The forgotten Danes” about court cases abroad has a link to a meeting in our parliament where the politicians plan to replace the Danish extradition agreement with a European one. Even today you can be extradited and convicted in another E.U. country for actions which are no crime in Denmark. In Germany a Dane is on trial for selling disgusting music because poor quality and bad taste is a crime in Germany.

A couple of the posters have asked me about how I feel about this case. I have to admit that I have been wrong at some points. I believed that she was not able to hire a high-profiled skilled lawyer like she did. A lawyer with so few clients and so many ressources that she had the ability to exam the statutes of limitation to the very end.

I am not stating that public defenders are unskilled. In some states the public defenders are financed by traffic fines. In Mississippi the hurricane meant fewer fines and therefore fewer money to provide people with a proper defense. The system collapsed. Maybe she could have made a good deal with a public defender but I doubt that the result would have been the same.

Second the courts surprised not only me but also the prosecution. I believed that it would be a kind of show trial but they took the time to be critical with the material the prosecution presented them and reached a fair verdict. Kudoos to them for reinstating the belief in a independent and fair justice system.

As it is stated in the start: The case is over.

Now we just need to buy the book and read the true story sometime in May. Maybe I will comment on the case – maybe not. It depends on what is going on in the Danish society at that time.