The Lonely People (aired Nov. 2, 2003) : Alan manages to get Roland Huff free by invoking diplomatic immunity (1). Eugene defends Jonathan Macklin, a white supremacist who once fathered a child with a black woman. Eugene and Jamie discuss their own interracial relationship (2), and the prosecutor at one point asks Macklin what he thinks about Thomas Jefferson and the allegations that he fathered a child with one of his slaves (3).
The Lonely People : Diplomatic Immunity (last updated November 2, 2003) (back to top)
Roland Huff indeed would be entitled to diplomatic immunity within the United States if he is the son of a Croatian diplomatic agent. But diplomatic immunity does not grant free reign to commit crimes and it does not pardon or excuse the commission of such crimes. It simply means that the host country (here the United States) cannot exercise jurisdiction over persons entitled to diplomatic immunity.
In fact, Roland Huff very likely could face trial in Croatia for the double-homicide he committed in the United States and it is even possible that he would have been better off standing trial in the United States. There is actually some precedent for a diplomat being tried back in his home country for a murder committed in the United States. In the 1950s, a Haitian diplomat assigned to the United States was charged with killing another Haitian diplomat. He reportedly was sent back to Haiti by joint agreement of Haiti and the United States and was put on trial, though he was ultimately found not guilty.
Similarly, the United States has put on trial some of its own diplomatic personnel who have violated the laws of other countries. In 1960, seven Marines at the U.S. embassy in London were reportedly caught selling cigarettes and liquor illegally. They used diplomatic immunity to avoid punishment in a British court, but reportedly were then tried by a U.S. court martial, convicted and punished.
Diplomatic Immunity in Practice
Under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which the United States has signed, diplomatic personnel from a sending state (here Croatia) are immune from criminal prosecution in the host country (here the United States) and cannot be subject to most kinds of civil lawsuits there. A diplomatic agent also has no obligation to give evidence. The "members of the family of a diplomatic agent forming part of his household" also share these privileges.
However, persons with such privileges are not exempted from the jurisdiction of their sending state and can still be prosecuted back home. Moreover, under Article 41, "without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving state."
There are additional checks to ensure that diplomats and other persons do not abuse their immunity. First, sending states can waive the diplomatic immunity and allow agents and other persons otherwise immunized to face prosecution in the host country. The decision is entirely up to the sending country and not to the person hoping to invoke diplomatic immunity. Countries are generally loathe to waive diplomatic immunity even in the face of serious crimes; the United States reportedly did not waive diplomatic immunity when the husband of a diplomat at the U.S. embassy in London was accused of "gross indecency" with a girl reportedly under 13 years old.
Second, host countries can declare the head of a diplomatic mission or a member of the mission's diplomatic staff to be persona non grata. The sending country must then recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission. Host countries can also take steps to prevent people who allegedly committed crimes within the host country from returning.
How often diplomats, their family members and other persons invoke diplomatic immunity is not entirely known. However, in the 1980s, the United States Department of State did study the use of diplomatic immunity in alleged criminal cases from August 1982 to February 1988. In Washington D.C., there were 147 alleged cases during this period, including 53 shoplifting cases, 24 assaults, 10 drug-related cases, 3 rapes or attempted rapes, and two sexual assaults. In New York, there were 44 alleged cases, including 13 assaults, 10 shoplifting, and 1 attempted sexual assault.
Sources: The United States Department of State has a table on the immunities and privileges afforded to foreign diplomatic personnel in the United States on-line here. The full text of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is on-line here. Clifton E. Wilson, Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities (University of Arizona Press, 1967). Grant V. McClanahan, Diplomatic Immunity: Principles, practices, problems (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown, 1989).
The Lonely People : Interracial Couples (last updated November 3, 2003) (back to top)
Interracial couples living in a single household have become more common over the past few decades but married couples are still more likely to be of the same race. In March 2000, interracial unmarried couples living as a single household comprised 4.3 percent of all such unmarried couples but interracial married couples comprised just 1.9 percent of all married couples, according to U.S. Census data.
The most common form of unmarried interracial couple living in a single household is one where one partner is white and the other is black. However, the most common form of married interracial couple is one where one partner is white and the other is an Asian or Pacific Islander.
The following table is based on data from the Census Bureau's America's Families and Living Arrangements Report for 2000:
|
| Unmarried Couples
| Married Couples
|
| Same Race
| 94.6%
| 97.4%
|
| Interracial
| 4.3%
| 1.9%
|
| Black/White
| 2.3%
| 0.6%
|
| Black/Asian and Pacific Islander
| -
| -
|
| White/Asian and Pacific Islander
| 1.8%
| 1.2%
|
Interracial couples comprised just 0.4 percent of all marriages in 1960, 0.7 percent in 1970, and 2.0 percent in 1980. Interracial marriages were once outlawed in much of the United States as miscegenation. A total of 16 states still prohibited and punished marriages on the basis of racial classifications when the United States Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional with its 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).
Sources: The Census Bureau's America's Families and Living Arrangements Report for 2000 is on-line via the Census Bureau here. Historical data on interracial couples is available through the Census Bureau here.
The Lonely People : Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (last updated December 8, 2002) (back to top)
Controversy continues as to whether President Thomas Jefferson fathered some or all of the children of Sally Hemings, a slave who worked at Jefferson's home on Monticello and accompanied his family to Paris for a few years in the late 1790s, and who had at least four surviving children.
These charges, first aired in 1802 as part of a political attack, gained some newfound weight and credibility in 1998 when DNA tests published in Nature magazine showed a link between the Hemings and Jefferson descendants, thus showing that an individual carrying the male Jefferson Y chromosome - though not necessarily Thomas Jefferson himself - fathered at least the last known child born to Sally Hemings. With that much shown but so much still left unanswered, scholars as well as Jefferson's accepted and alleged descendants have continued to turn to historical evidence to pinpoint which adult male Jefferson was in fact the father.
The researchers behind the 1998 tests concluded that "the simplest and most probable explanations for our molecular findings" were that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson, Sally Heming's last known child. The Monticello Research Committee, convened by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which owns and operates Monticello today, also concluded in 2000 that there was a "strong likelihood" that Jefferson and Hemings had a relationship that led to the birth of one or more of Hemings' children, and said that "convincing evidence does not exist for the hypothesis that another male Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children."
However, others continue to dispute the historical evidence. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society's Scholar Commission on the Jefferson-Hemings Matter, for example, published a report in April 2001, saying that the evidence was not conclusive. This commission pointed to another Jefferson male, his much younger brother Randolph, as a likelier candidate as the father of Hemings's children.
Some of Heming's descendants have long sought recognition as part of Thomas Jefferson's family and have won some recognition in the arena of public opinion, but their efforts have had little success in convincing the Monticello Association, a non-profit organization composed of Thomas Jefferson's lineal descendants. The Monticello Association has continued to deny Hemings's descendants membership because it is still unclear whether they actually qualify. If recognized as qualifying, Hemings's descendants would be entitled to join the Monticello Association as full members; they would thus be entitled to be buried in the Monticello graveyard, to attend annual reunions at Monticello, and to have full voting rights within the organization.
Records have established that Sally Hemings had at least four children who survived their infancies : Harriet, Beverly, Madison and Eston. But another long-running question exists as to whether Sally Hemings had an earlier child. The descendants of Thomas C. Woodson have long claimed that their ancestor was an unrecognized son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, that Thomas C. Woodson was identified as such in the 1802 article that first asserted the existence of a relationship between the two, and that they are entitled to recognition as lineal descendants of Thomas Jefferson. However, there is no documentary evidence that Thomas C. Woodson was Sally Hemings's child. Moreover, the DNA tests in 1998 determined that Woodson was not descended from any Jefferson male; Woodson's descendants have denied the validity of such tests and continue to argue that they are descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
A review of some of the disputed evidence follows:
- The timing of Jefferson's visits to Monticello correlates with the conception windows for Hemings's known children. This is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence in support of the relationship, but critics have said that this can be explained if other Jefferson relatives were likely to visit Monticello while Jefferson was present.
- Jefferson gave unique access to freedom to Hemings' children, even though he did not free Sally Hemings himself. Jefferson freed Hemings' daughter Harriet during his lifetime, allowed others to flee without being retrieved, and freed Hemings's two youngest sons, Madison and Eston, in his will. Critics point out that other members of the Hemings family were also freed in that will and received more favorable treatment than Sally Hemings's own children.
- Some of Hemings's children claimed to be descended from Thomas Jefferson, and have passed that belief down through generations. Some people close to Thomas Jefferson or the Monticello community also believed that Thomas Jefferson was indeed the father of Sally Hemings's children.
- Thomas Jefferson himself arguably denied the charges in a letter to a member of his administration. In an 1805 letter to a member of his Cabinet, Jefferson admitted that only one of the charges leveled against him by his political opponents was true, thus implicitly denying his enemies' charge that he had fathered a child with Sally Hemings. Dr. McKenzie Wallehnborn dissented form the Monticello Research Committee's report, finding that "this has to be a very straight forward denial of all the Federalist charges which included the report of a sexual liaison with Sally Hemings."
Whether Thomas Jefferson was indeed the father of Sally Hemings's children or not may never be decided to complete satisfaction.
Nevertheless, as one member of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society's Scholar Commission on the Jefferson-Hemings Matter, Prfoessor Paul Rahe, wrote, "There is … one thing that we do know, and it is damning enough. Despite the distaste that he expressed for the propensity of slaveowners and their relatives to abuse their power, Jefferson either engaged in such abuse himself or tolerated it on the part of one or more members of his extended family. In his private, as in his public, life, there was, for all his brilliance and sagacity, something dishonest, something self-serving and self-indulgent about the man."
Sources: The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, on-line here, has collected resources on the controversy on-line here, including the January 200 Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, which is on-line here. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, on-line here, released its own critique in April 2001, on-line here. The Monticello Association is on-line here. Eugene A. Foster et. al, Jefferson fathered slave's last child, Nature 396, 27-28 (1998) (note: the headline is inaccurate; Foster's article simply provides evidence that Jefferson could have been Eston Hemings's father, and that was the "simplest and most probable explanation" of the DNA evidence). Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings : An American Controversy (University Press of Virginia, 1997). Byron W. Woodson, Sr., A President in the Family : Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson (Praeger Publishers, 2001).
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