O.K.  So this isn’t exactly an example of political stupidity, but it’s just wrong on so many accounts that I ffel the need to comment on it.

Deborah Dark, a citizen of the U.K. was arrested in France in 1989 for being in a car containing several pounds of Marijuana.  Her defense was that she was set up by an abusive boyfriend.  There was apparently enough evidence to back this defense up, since the court acquitted her on the charges of drug possession.  She then returned home to London.

After she leaves the country, the French Prosecutor appeals the non-conviction, gives her no notice of the appeal and retrial and manages to convict her in abstentia.

The French authorities managed to hit the Trifecta in their treatment of Ms. Dark.  They combined Double Jeapoardy, with no notice of trail and capped it with conviction in abstentia.

This from the people with a sense of moral superiority.

But wait, it gets worse.  Not satisfied with convicting her in abstentia, French authorities issue a European Arrest Warrant.  In 2005.  That’s 15 years after the conviction with no attempt on there part to give her any notice of the trial or conviction.

Ms. Dark traveled to Spain in 2008 to visit her father.  She was arrested there due to the European Warrant, and held in jail for a month.  Spain refused to extradite due to the untimely delay.  She was arrested again when she returned to the U.K.  Again, the arresting country refused to extradite due to the delay.

Ms. Dark finds herself in the position of not being able to leave the country without being arrested due to the warrant, but at the same time no reasonable country will honor France’s attempt to have her extradited due to their actions in waiting 15 years to issue the warrant.

This by the Country whose Criminal Justice system gave us the horrors of the French Revolution and the blatant miscarriage of justice known as the Dreyfus affair.  France’s Criminal Justice system doesn’t seem to have advanced mush since the 19th Century.