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Trumbull prosecutor says return of Claudia Hoerig is ‘close’ but challenges remain
By Ed Runyan
NILES
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said he thinks the effort to bring Claudia Hoerig back to Trumbull County from Brazil to stand trial in the 2007 death of her husband, Maj. Karl Hoerig, is “close” to success.
Claudia Hoerig, 53, is charged with aggravated murder in the death of her husband in their Newton Falls home. She fled after his death back to her native Brazil, where she remains.
She was arrested in Brazil in the spring of 2016 after that country’s Supreme Court revoked her citizenship.
Brazil’s Supreme Court followed that in March 2017 with a 4-1 vote to extradite her to the United States, but it’s still up to the executive branch of Brazil’s government to send her back, Watkins said.
He spoke about the case at the annual probate court seminar at Ciminero’s Banquet Center here, saying the Hoerig case is a case study in transnational legal matters.
Watkins, prosecutor since 1984, has tried 45 murder cases in his career, Trumbull County Probate Judge James Fredericka said.
Watkins said he had a meeting April 27 with officials from the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of State under President Donald Trump who flew here to meet with him.
They talked about “the role of my office and Ohio law if she would be returned to Ohio for trial,” he said.
Watkins said there have been victories along the way – Claudia Hoerig’s case is the first one in Brazil where someone has been stripped of their Brazilian citizenship.
“Finally we got some resolution with a [Brazilian Supreme Court] decision, but we haven’t had her turned over,” Watkins said.
“At this point we are close. She was incarcerated last year. She is in prison. We did win a 4-1 federal Supreme Court decision in the country of Brazil saying she does not have Brazilian citizenship.”
He’s holding out hope that she will be returned in “weeks or a few months.”
Issues that have been cited as reasons she hasn’t been returned are capital punishment and human rights.
Claudia Hoerig was on television with her lawyer saying she was afraid to come back to the United States because she feared the death penalty, but “this is not a death-penalty case,” Watkins said. “That is not an issue.”
Another question has been whether it’s a human-rights violation to give someone a life prison sentence.
Brazil and some other countries have said they will not extradite criminals who commit crime in the United States because the United States has life prison terms.
“In Brazil, if you commit numerous murders, the most you can get is 30 years” in prison, he said. There are countries that refuse to return terrorists to another country “unless you guarantee us the penalty will be what we think it should be.”
But “El Chapo” – Mexican drug lord Joaqu n Guzm °n – was returned to the United States from Mexico to face a possible life prison sentence, “so we’re getting it done,” Watkins said.