(03-20-2020, 12:14 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(03-19-2020, 03:27 PM)JagNGeorgia Wrote: You said federal court isn't the right venue. Is it the correct venue except that Russia is shielding them from prosecution or is it the wrong venue and they shouldn't have been charged? How is Russia protecting them, BTW? They showed up to court. The court proceedings didn't take place because the prosecution voluntarily dropped the charges. Existing treaties already establish rules for these instances. The government isn't going to negotiate where these crimes would be prosecuted. They have jurisdiction or they don't. 

Governments can negotiate the extradition of foreign nationals based on applicable laws but that isn't happening here.

A defendant in the US system has the right to discover or subpoena anything related to the charges they face. Russia's government pretty clearly intended to use that right to discover our spies and their secrets. US federal courts were not designed to cope with that. A special tribunal would have to be set up if they wanted to pursue these charges further.

The government charged them because they felt they had sufficient evidence to prove their case. They knew beforehand what would be available during discovery. If they didn't want that information available, then they shouldn't have charged them. The courts are fully prepared for that, so I'm not sure where you get the idea that they couldn't "cope" with it. The Russian government had nothing to do with the discovery process and the defendants showing up to prove their innocence. You just said a bunch of random unrelated things.

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