Killer should stay behind our bars
Living on the Canadian border, Washington residents recognize better than most Americans the subtle differences that separate the two cultures.
Spelling, pronunciation and the value of a dollar. We’re accustomed to those distinctions. We live with them. They’re quaint.
There’s nothing quaint, though, about a radically different measure of accountability for criminal behavior – especially in the case of a killer who savagely beat a 13-year-old runaway to death in Spokane 11 years ago.
John Medlock was convicted of murdering Rebecca Hedman and is in prison, where he will stay for at least another 12 years and four months under Washington law. But Medlock, a Canadian citizen, has petitioned to be transferred to a prison in British Columbia, nearer his mother’s home in Vancouver.
Washington Gov. Gary Locke is adamantly opposed to the idea, noting that in Canada, Medlock conceivably could receive full parole in May.
Unfortunately, it’s not Locke’s call. The decision is up to the U.S. Justice Department.
Under federal law, foreign nationals who are convicted of crimes in the United States may seek transfer to prisons in their home nations. Reciprocity provisions give Americans who get in trouble the same option.
Medlock’s request might be acceptable if authorities in Canada could be counted on to hold him behind bars for the length of his term. It would spare Washington taxpayers the cost of his upkeep.
But Canadian law is apparently a little quicker to forgive the heinous crime Medlock committed in a Spokane motel room on Oct. 17, 1993. Hedman, or “Misty” as she was known on the streets, was a runaway, a prostitute, a drug abuser. Before she was a victim of Medlock, she was a victim of lenient state laws that gave children more latitude to make bad choices, without adult interference, than many of them were ready to handle. The killing brought the situation to the attention of the Washington Legislature, which tried to rectify its previous shortsightedness by passing the so-called “Becca bill.”
At trial, Medlock’s attorney called no witnesses in his defense. He asked for a 20-year sentence. The prosecutor asked for 40. Judge James Murphy imposed 26, the most allowed by law without going over the standard sentencing range.
“Deliberate cruelty exists whenever someone kills another human being,” the judge told Medlock. “You have to be cruel.”
Indeed. After having sex with the 13-year-old victim, Medlock told her he was dissatisfied and wanted his $50 back. When she didn’t comply, he clubbed her in the back of the head six times with a baseball bat. He tried to strangle her, too, according to the autopsy report. In recent years, he’s even asked to renege on paying the interest on her funeral expenses.
If Medlock were now a fugitive in Canada, wanted in the United States for a crime that could result in the death penalty, Canada would not extradite him. U.S. officials should be just as unwilling to send him across the border for a possible early release from prison – and from accountability.