Taking Liberties Part 4 Posted by Brian Howes

Taking Liberties Part 4 Posted by Brian Howes

Alex Stone

Alex Stone is a blind computer science graduate from south London who had worked for a bank for ten years. In May 2003 he joined an email list for blind people, and started chatting to a woman called Alma from Kansas City. They started talking regularly on the phone as well as emailing each other. After a few months they decided they wanted to meet, so Alex made plans to fly out to Kansas City and spend a holiday with Alma that August.

In 2003, as his friendship with Alma was blossoming, Alex Stone was still blissfully unaware of the world of political treaties. Alex and Alma spent a wonderful fortnight together, and Alex met Alma’s son, one-year-old Zachary. In the light of his new relationship, he decided to take the redundancy offer he’d been made, and to move out to the US to be with Alma: ‘It was exactly what I wanted to do; I wanted to go and live out there and be with her’.

Alex sorted out his life in the UK and flew back to Kansas City in November 2003. He hadn’t been there long when the trouble began. Zachary developed a cold that wouldn’t get better. He was clearly unwell, so Alma’s mother took him to hospital to be looked at. While he was there, the doctors decided to X-ray him, and discovered that both of his arms and both of his legs were broken.

Alma rushed to hospital to be with Zachary, and Alex stayed at home in her apartment. But over the next four or five days, Alex began to feel uncomfortable, and gradually realised that suspicion was falling on him. ‘Because I was new on the scene, it was convenient for them to suspect me rather than look at their own family.’

Things got worse when a friend of the family came round to the apartment to warn him. The friend said Alma’s family might try to ‘do something stupid’. Feeling threatened, Alex moved out of Alma’s apartment into a motel. Another four days went past and, after no further contact with Alma, the police turned up. He was taken in for questioning and accused of having injured the child. The only other people who could have injured Zachary were members of Alma’s family, and according to the police they were all ‘very nice people’.

Alex wasn’t charged, and he was taken back to his motel. He contacted a lawyer, who told him that as he hadn’t been charged with anything he was free to go, and ought to get out of the US as quickly as possible. So he did; he flew home to London straight away. He’d been in the US less than a month.

Back home he discovered that the papers and TV news reports in Missouri were full of stories saying he had been charged with injuring Zachary, and that he was now in prison. Despite the inaccuracy of the reports, the fact that he had been formally charged with the crime meant things were getting more serious.

First-degree assault on a minor can carry a sentence of up to 30 years in the US.

Nothing happened for a year. Then, in November 2004, Alex’s neighbour at his old flat phoned to say that three policemen had been knocking at his door. Alex was advised to turn himself in.

Two days later he presented himself at Charing Cross Police Station, where he was arrested and extradition proceedings began.

Over the following months, and several more court appearances, he discovered that he had absolutely no defence under the Extradition Act. Simply by charging Alex with the crime, the US had the right to extradite him. Thanks to David Blunkett’s new law, the British legal system was impotent to protect him. At the end of April 2005, Alex’s family drove him to Gatwick Airport, where he was handed over to the Scotland Yard extradition squad, handcuffed, shackled, and put on a private jet to the US.

He was then transferred across the country in ‘holding cells’, and his journey ended in the county jail in (the ironically named) Liberty, Missouri. He was locked up for 23 hours a day. He was allowed to take his laptop with him to write letters, but they didn’t give him a printer, so he couldn’t print them or send them back. It took several months to get him a scanner so that he could scan in and read the letters that were sent to him. He couldn’t make international calls or send emails, so he had no contact with his family in London for many months. When his father came to visit him in September, there was a glass screen between them, and they had to talk using a telephone. For Alex, his dad might as well have been in London.

He was in jail for six and a half months. In November, Alex’s mother helped to secure bail, but he had to remain in the US. By February, his lawyers went to the public prosecutor and, in Alex’s words, ‘They said, look, you’ve got no evidence here, have you? This is not going to stand up in court, so why don’t you just drop it?’ But the prosecutors were stuck because, having gone to the trouble of extraditing Alex, they needed to find him guilty of something. Alex and his lawyers negotiated a plea bargain. He passed a polygraph test, pleaded guilty to fleeing the country (despite the fact that he did it solely on the advice of a US lawyer), and flew home to the UK in the first week of March 2006. He’d been stuck in legal limbo for over 10 months.

There is another reason why the prosecutors were prepared to accept the plea bargain. Alma’s brother had a child who was discovered to have similar injuries that dated from a time when Alex wasn’t even in the country. The mother of that child and the grandmother were prepared to testify against a family member who was suspected of injuring both children. For Alex, it was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.