I don’t know that you intended it this way, but I find this comment to be callous. She has been imprisoned in a foreign jail for 5 months for a crime she literally did not commit. She is looking at a maximum sentence of 10 years. Given the state-of-affairs between the US and Russia, she has little hope for impartiality by the Russian courts. On her list of feelings, I doubt confused even registers.
My litmus test for this situation is simple. If one of my kids was imprisoned in Russia I would want the US to do everything in their power to get them out. I wouldn’t care if they were innocent or guilty, if they had been dishonorably discharged, if they had hiked too near the border, had a criminal record in the US, or what demographics they fit into.
If that’s what I’d expect the US to do for my family, then I’m not going to pretend that other citizens should get less. I don’t have to like Griner or Whelan. I don’t have to think they made the right choices. I expect my government to stand up for all of its citizens, all of the time – especially against Russia.
Nobody’s trying to make Russia give Griner any particular sentence here. We just don’t trust the Russian justice system (as is appropriate), and we want our citizen home. And the fact that Russia is breaking its own law in this situation tells you everything you need to know about why it’s appropriate to circumvent their system.
She didn’t commit a crime against the US. We don’t even know for certain that she committed a crime in Russia! So the US position shouldn’t be “ok, whatever you guys think is fair.”
If an American woman was to be imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for riding in a car with an unfamiliar man, would you want the State Department to just let her languish there (maybe I’ll regret asking this)? That’s a ridiculously harsh sentence for a very minor crime. We don’t owe justice to Saudi Arabia and their cockeyed legal system. We don’t owe justice to Russia and their corruption-riddled kleptocracy. We do owe it to our own citizens.
Again, for everyone who thinks she’s just getting attention because she’s black and gay: SHE IS A PRO BASKETBALL PLAYER. She is the most famous player in the WNBA. That is why she’s well-known, that’s why she’s getting attention. Probably why she’s been singled out by Russia as collateral for a swap.
If we’re critiquing the things that people pay attention to, maybe critique the people who don’t understand that Russia has jailed the women’s equivalent of Michael Jordan.
Mark Fogel is a professor and it’s not OK for a professor to be detained. But understand that he’s not only charged with cannabis possession, they’ve actually accused him of espionage. Understand that he’s already been sentenced, which makes things harder. Understand the difference betwen these two situations.
Two things.
One, it sounded at first like the attitude was, “That’s so much harsher than what she would get in the US therefore it is unfair.” Similar to American that complain about getting caned in Malaysia(?) for littering. But when Tamerlane later pointed out the punishment for a Russian citizen was significantly lower I realized that it was not the case of Karens and Chads complaining how other countries do things differently than the US.
Two, assuming the punishment was appropriate, say the 10 years was because she “imported” the oil into Russia rather than mere possession. I wonder how Americans would feel if it were reversed. Say a Russian celebrity came here, beat someone almost to death, got a 5 year prison term and the Russians protested saying that in THEIR country that would be a 24 hours lock up (obviously I made that last part up). We know Americans would say, “He committed the crime in America so we play by American rules not Russian rules.”
And I don’t think it’s about her being a celebrity. We went to bat for Otto Warmbier who was a dumbass college kid that went to North Korea (WTF would anyone go there?!) because we felt his sentence was unfair and more about being an American than the actual crime, although in NK can we really be sure they would not have given their own citizen the same treatment?
Except the point here isn’t what the Americans say. It’s what the Russians would say. They wouldn’t say “ok fair catch, we trust America will treat this Russian fairly.” They’d say “we don’t like your justice system, we’d like our guy back, let’s cut a deal.” And a deal would be cut if the sides could agree on terms.
People are approaching this as if one country ever “owes” another country assistance in its justice system. Unless there’s a treaty, no country owes another country anything. If Russia says someone committed a crime, we don’t owe them the benefit of the doubt. We don’t owe them a warm body to satisfy their need for punishment. But we do owe American citizens American justice to the extent that we can deliver it, wherever jurisdiction they’re in. And vice versa with Russia or anyone else.
The controlling ethics here are the ethics of diplomacy, not judicial ethics, or the ethics of whatever makes people seethe about the fact that somehow, somewhere, a black lesbian basketball player broke a rule and wasn’t severely punished for it.
I reread the article, and did not see anywhere that he was charged with espionage. Given that his visa was at least in part sponsored by the US Embassy, it’s not implausible that they might SUSPECT him of it, but there’s nothing saying he was charged.
“Russian prosecutors had painted him as a “large-scale” drug dealer intent on selling drugs to his students and falsely labeled him an employee of the U.S. Embassy,”
Paul Whelan, who is the other person in the proposed exchange, WAS convicted of espionage in a Russian court. He’s no prize - among other things, he received a bad conduct discharge from the Marines - but I have no idea whether he actually did anything illegal in Russia.
Griner and Fogel are certainly guilty of being terminally stupid. Fogel in particular, by bringing a nontrivial amount of cannabis cartridges etc. I get the feeling that he and his wife so loved living in Russia that he just didn’t believe anything bad could happen.
Not that it really matters but does anyone know how hard it is to get weed in Russia? When it was illegal in Canada it was still trivial to get and I wonder if the Russian situation is similar.
Maybe this depends on what part of Russia you lived in, but I do know that for some years after the collapse of Communism, the Ukrainian region had the highest per capita rate of new HIV cases, because of rampant IV drug abuse. I’ve also heard that krokodil, which is not used by anyone who isn’t desperate, originated there too.
She more than a foot taller, probably a hundred pounds heavier, than likely most of the other prisoners, and a professional athlete. As soon as she learns how to make a shiv, she’ll be running the cell block.
While we’re getting pretty far afield, I think it’s safe to say she won’t be running the block - I strongly suspect her nutrition will be sub-par even by Russian standards, and that both the guards and inmates will be… encouraged… to make sure she is isolated, suppressed and otherwise made an example of.
Which gets back to the point of the thread - the crime she was sentenced for (as opposed to the one she may well have committed to be clear) is likely 99.9% politically motivated, with intents on forcing the US to compromise or at least be embarrassed.
Or more likely something like a 3,000 ruble bribe to a customs official.
Exactly Griner has become a pawn in the game of international diplomacy. What she did or didn’t do is less relevant then what America should do when Russia takes one of their pawns.
Or she will become part of the gang that controls things.
But seriously, they are going to starve her as she will not getting anymore food than people half her size. So she will not be able to maintain her strength without help from others and that may be very difficult in a situation where everyone else is starving and overworked.
Best case scenario is if she can charm/befriend some of the guards.
For folks who support this view and support the US government doing all it can to bring US citizens home, would you feel the same way if it wasn’t a bullshit charge like weed possession? e.g. if a US citizen in another country murders someone and there is video evidence of that, are you still supportive of bringing them home to the US, because “screw the judicial system of the other country, we want our people back”?
Or do you feel like this about Griner because her “crime” was so minor?
