How Do You Feel About Diplomatic Immunity?

What’s the story?

• An American diplomat’s wife quickly departed the U.K. after she was allegedly involved in a fatal wrong-way car crash in Northamptonshire.
• Anna Sacoolas left the country after the U.S. Embassy in London asserted her diplomatic immunity.

What happened?

• Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road near the Royal Air Force Croughton station (operated by the U.S. Air Force) when she crashed into 19-year-old motorcyclist, Harry Dunn.
• Sacoolas initially cooperated with English police but left the country after receiving immunity.  
• Police want Sacoolas to return to “enable Northamptonshire police to complete their investigations and justice to be served for Harry Dunn and his very distraught family,” Stephen Mold, the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for Northamptonshire, told TIME.

What is diplomatic immunity?

• In theory, it means that foreign diplomats cannot be arrested for any local crime or civil case.
• Though the concept has existed for centuries, it’s formalized in the 1961 Vienna Convention.
• The convention says specifically that a “diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State” and the diplomat “shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.”
• Foreign Offices can ask a foreign government to waive immunity where they feel it’s appropriate. In this case, the parents of Harry Dunn want Trump to waive Sacoolas’ diplomatic immunity.

What are people saying?

President Donald Trump:

“It’s a very complex issue as you know. So a young man was killed. The person that was driving the automobile has diplomatic immunity. We’re going to speak to her very shortly and see if we can do something. It was an accident… We’re going to speak to her and see what we can come up with so there can be some healing.”

Trump added:

“The woman was driving on the wrong side of the road. That can happen.”

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson:

“I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose.”

Trump was photographed holding briefing notes that read:

“(If raised) Note that the spouse of the U.S. Government employee will have to consider, based on the advice or her legal counsel, whether to make herself available for questioning by British authorities.”

In response, Dunn’s mother, Charlotte Charles, told Sky News:

 “I don’t see the point in Boris Johnson talking to President Trump or President Trump even taking a call from Boris Johnson if he’d already made his decision. It’s just beyond any realm of human thinking.”

What do you think?

How do you feel about diplomatic immunity? Should it be revisited? When should it be waived? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman