France Will Not Extradite if Death Penalty Is Possible By JOHN KIFNER •Court to Review Death Penalty for Mentally Retarded (Mar 26, 2001) •Death Penalty Reform (Mar 12, 2001) •Public Lives: A Proud and Unwavering Believer in the Death Penalty (Feb 10, 2001) Find more related articles by selecting from the following topics: Suits and Litigation Decisions and Verdicts Crime and Criminals Capital Punishment fficials in the United States face a significant legal snag before they can bring to trial a man accused of killing a Buffalo doctor who provided abortions. The suspect, James C. Kopp, was arrested Thursday after a two-and-a- half-year search tracked him to a French seaside village. But French law forbids the extradition of anyone who could face the death penalty, and French officials said yesterday that Mr. Kopp, an anti-abortion activist, would not be turned over to the United States unless they were given guarantees that he would not be executed. "They will refuse to extradite him," the local prosecutor, Christian Lecrom, said in a news conference yesterday in Dinan, a small pleasure port in Brittany, in the northwestern part of the country, where Mr. Kopp was arrested by French police on Thursday. In Paris, a representative for the Ministry of Justice, Frdrique Wagon, said that no exceptions had been made to the French law against granting extradition in potential capital punishment cases. France abolished its death penalty in 1981. Several other countries, including Canada, also refuse to turn over defendants who might face execution. Mr. Kopp, a longtime anti-abortion protester known among his colleagues as Atomic Dog, is charged with the October 1998 killing of Dr. Barnett A. Slepian. Dr. Slepian was fatally shot in the kitchen of his Amherst, N.Y., home as he warmed soup in front of his wife and son. A federal indictment charges Mr. Kopp with violating a 1993 law protecting access to abortion clinics and...
