Negotiations between American and British officials are ongoing. The envoy’s family members are also protected from all criminal and civil prosecution while they are in-country.

As stated in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, foreign envoys like Jonathan Sacoolas “shall not be liable to any form of arrest and detention”. Public outrage and op-ed vitriol ensued.Īs the wife of a US intelligence agent who was working in Northamptonshire at the time of the accident, Sacoolas was immune to prosecution. The UK foreign secretary later admitted in the House of Commons that local police had no authority to detain Sacoolas. The driver, Anne Sacoolas, claimed diplomatic immunity and fled the UK on a private jet. That’s how the media covered the story of Harry Dunn, a British teenager who died in August after his motorcycle was struck by a Volvo SUV traveling on the wrong side of the road in Northamptonshire, England. Don’t Abuse Diplomatic Immunity (Toledo Blade). If a diplomat gets busted again, he or she will be expelled from the country.Recent headlines, though, are a stark reminder that diplomatic immunity is more than just a hack plot device: A Teen’s Death Has Put Diplomatic Immunity Under a Spotlight (Time), British Fury as an American Cites Diplomatic Immunity (the Economist). Shortly after MacLean’s death, then-Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley pushed through reforms that led to an automatic one-year driver’s licence suspension for any diplomat caught driving under the influence but refuses to waive diplomatic immunity, the Toronto Sun reported in 2011. One small, positive development did come out of that tragic case. He was brought back home to Russia, where he was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years in jail. Catherine Doré, a friend who was walking with MacLean, suffered severe injuries. Lawyer Catherine MacLean was killed instantly when Knyazev slammed his vehicle into her, while she walked her dog in Ottawa’s New Edinburgh neighbourhood.

Luckily, no one was hurt in that incident.īut Russian diplomat Andrei Knyazev killed someone, and injured another, while driving drunk in the nation’s capital, in January 2001.

Diplomatic immunity murder