The following editorial appeared last Wednesday in the Olympian of Olympia.

It’s time for Frederick D. Russell to answer for the charges filed against him. The Washington state resident recently learned that the long arm of the law in this state reaches all the way to Dublin, Ireland.

Russell, 27, is the accused drunken driver charged with killing three college students four years ago near Pullman. Russell skipped bail and fled the country.

After years of hiding under an assumed name, Russell was arrested in Dublin seven months ago on a fugitive warrant. U.S. authorities asked that he be returned to Washington state to face trial for killing the three students.

Slam dunk, right? Wrong. Ireland has denied the past 19 extradition requests from the United States.

People in this state and on this side of the Atlantic were outraged that a man charged with such a serious and heinous crime could escape justice.

After months of court hearings, a Dublin judge last week made the right decision. The judge said Russell should be shipped back to his homeland to stand trial.

Russell was handcuffed and returned to Dublin’s Cloverhill Prison, where he has been held since his arrest. Russell had two weeks to appeal the justice’s ruling, but let us hope that by summer the fugitive is back on Washington soil.

This tragic saga began June 4, 2001, when Russell’s Chevrolet Blazer slammed into three other cars on state Route 270, which connects the university campus in Pullman to the one in Moscow, Idaho. Russell was accused of traveling 90 miles per hour and attempting to pass other vehicles. Three WSU seniors were killed, and four other people were injured.

Court records show that Russell’s blood alcohol level was 0.12 – above the legal limit of 0.08. His lawyer tried to get the blood-alcohol tests quashed, saying law enforcement officers from the wrong state collected the evidence. The judge allowed the blood-alcohol evidence. Russell’s father posted $5,000 bail to get his son released from custody, and just days before the young man was scheduled to stand trial, he fled.

Irish authorities took nine months to investigate a tip from U.S. law enforcement officers that Russell was living in their country. Eventually Dublin authorities discovered that Russell was working as a security guard at a Dublin lingerie shop living under the alias of “David Carroll,” complete with Irish tattoos.

During court hearings last month, his lawyers argued that Russell would be exposed to inhumane and degrading treatment, including rape and isolated confinement, in a U.S. prison. They also argued that Russell would face a much stiffer prison sentence in the United States than in Ireland, where life sentences average about 13 1/2 years.

But Justice Peart looked at the seriousness of the crime and Russell’s attempt to elude capture and made the right decision. The judge said, and we agree, that it’s time for Frederick Russell to face his accusers and answer to the homicide charges against him.