FRANCE WON'T EXTRADITE U.S. FUGITIVE

Exguru, Convicted Of Killing In Absentia, Free Amid Doubts About American
Justice

By Johnthor Dahlburg, Los Angeles Times

PARIS Since 1993, the writer with the saltandpepper goatee lived in a
converted windmill in a village of southern France with his
strawberryblond Swedish wife. Last June, before sunrise, heavily armed
police moved in and arrested him as he lay naked in bed.

He claimed it was a case of mistaken identity. But fingerprints showed he
was Ira Einhom, a former hippie and New Age guru from Philadelphia
convicted on firstdegree murder charges in the death of his former
girlfriend and a man on the run for almost 17 years.

U.S. authorities wanted Einhorn back so he could begin serving the life
term he was sentenced to in his absence after he skipped bail. A court in
the southwestern wine capital of Bordeaux, which delayed its decision three
times, finally gave it Thursday: "No."

Instead, the Bordeaux Appeals Court ordered Einhom, 57, subject of a dogged
manhunt across five countries, freed.

"The United States has learned today, to its distress, that it still has
lessons to learn from old Europe in matters of human rights," Dominique
Delthil, Einhom's attorney, told reporters.

The American, incarcerated in Gradignan prison near Bordeaux and, who, as
usual, wore faded blue jeans, said "thank you" to the judges.

From the Massachusetts "nanny trial" and the O.J. Simpson case to the
existence of the death penalty in many states and the burgeoning size of
the U.S. prison population, justice, American style, have a poor reputation
in France and much of the rest of Europe. In making their ruling, the
Bordeaux Judges in effect said that in American hands, Einhom would not be
treated according to standards of French justice.

Shortly before his trial was due to start, in January 1981, Einhom, an
antiwar activist and confidant to Philadelphia blue bloods and
millionaires, fled the United States. In 1993, prosecutors, using a new
Pennsylvania law, tried him in his absence. A jury took two hours to
convict him of firstdegree murder.

Einhorn's story goes back to September 1977, when a former lover, Helen
'Holly' Maddux of Tyler, Texas, disappeared. Eighteen months later, the
former Bryn Mawr College student's emaciated body, the skull shattered in
at least a halfdozen places, was found in a trunk in Einhorn's
Philadelphia apartment.

Emhom said he was being framed and spoke of the CIA and KGB. A friend of
Abbic Hoffinan and Jerry Rubin, he had friends in powerful places. His
lawyer, future U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, won him low bail, $40,000. Barbara
Bronfinan, a Montreal socialite, reportedly paid it.

Einhom bolted the United States his trial was to begin. Since he has been
on the run, from Britain and Ireland to Sweden, Denmark and France.

Like Pennsylvania, France also tries people accused of crimes even if they
are not present in court. But under French procedure, once the accused are
captured or turn himself in, he or she must be retried and thus have the
chance to present a defense. Einhorn's lawyers successfully argued that
since Pennsylvania does not have that requirement, Einhorn's civil
liberties would be denied by allowing extradition.

"The court's decision is in line with our expectations and proves that the
American justice system is less advanced than ours," Delthil said. The
legal team also had warned that Einhorn might be retried just so
Pennsylvania prosecutors could seek the death penalty, which France
abolished as inhumane in October 1981.

In Philadelphia, Joel Rosen, the prosecutor who tried the case and won
Einhorn's conviction, expressed anger over the decision.

"The one thing that is clearer than anything is this guy murdered his
girlfriend, kept her body in a steamer trunk in his apartment for a year
and a half, and he is getting away with murder thanks to the decision, of
the court," Rosen said. "France is protecting him. He will be allowed to
live his lovely life after he got away with murdering a woman."