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Local court clerk helps with cases on
war crimes
Tribunal deals with former Yugoslavia
By Kay Stewart
kstewart@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
From federal court in Louisville, where drug dealing and fraud cases
are typical, to The Hague, the world's legal capital and site of a
special court where crimes against humanity are the only cases.
That's the transition U.S. District Court Clerk Jeff Apperson faces
Monday when he starts a four-month assignment as chief of court
management at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia.
The tribunal is the court in the Netherlands where the "Butcher of
the Balkans," former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, was on trial
for genocide and war crimes when he died of a heart attack in March.
Apperson will offer legal advice on court rules and procedures, and
help develop policies in such areas as witness protection.
Another task is to ensure the efficient conduct of court
proceedings, including overseeing the calendar for three courtrooms
and the filing and distribution of all court documents. He'll have a
staff of 37, including 10 lawyers.
For Apperson, a 51-year-old lawyer who has made six trips to the
former Yugoslavian region since 1999 to consult on court
administration, the opportunity was too significant to pass up. "I
don't know of many more important matters" than genocide, he said.
The tribunal, formed by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, has
issued 161 war-crime indictments, with 46 convictions so far, all
relating to atrocities committed primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina
during the Balkan wars of the 1990s that followed the Soviet Union's
breakup.
More than 200,000 people were killed in the conflicts, which gave
the world the term "ethnic cleansing."
At the tribunal, 16 judges from throughout the world, including the
United States, hear cases, with a panel of three deciding each case.
The maximum penalty is a life sentence.
Trials can take months because of complex pretrial issues, security
and the numerous witnesses required to travel great distances. More
than 4,000 witnesses have testified.
Apperson said the tribunal represents a model for the future of
war-crime cases.
"It's the idea that crimes against humanity are going to be tried by
the world community and not just the nation they're committed in,"
he said.
His assignment underscores the international outreach of the federal
court district centered in Louisville and covering the western half
of Kentucky. Apperson said he's assessed at least 15 court systems
in other countries, primarily on trips sponsored by the State
Department and an international arm of the American Bar Association.
The additional involvement of federal judges from Louisville has
made the district "among the leaders in international relations,"
Apperson said.
For example, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson, a member of the
U.S. Judicial Conference's international committee, returned last
month from a trip to Brazil, where he lectured law students on how
the U.S. system of justice works.
Simpson has also made several trips to Eastern European countries
and to Russia, where he stopped in Siberia to consult with officials
on a system of justice.
Other nations, especially in the former Soviet Union, are hungry for
ideas on how to establish independent, credible court systems,
Simpson said, adding that most trips are to developing countries,
"not the French Riviera."
The trips bring "incredible" benefits, he said, because economically
viable countries require a "consistent, honest, effective legal
system that includes not only laws but courts and judges."
Chief U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II, who has traveled to
Ireland twice to consult on the reorganization of its judicial
system, said he couldn't count the number of judges from other
countries, especially in Eastern Europe, who have visited Louisville
in recent years to learn more about the U.S. court system.
Apperson's appointment to the tribunal "is a huge compliment to him.
It demonstrates to me what we have always thought -- he is one of
the best, if not the best, clerk of a federal court in the country,"
Heyburn said.
While working with the tribunal, Apperson will be on an unpaid leave
from his job in Louisville. His family will remain in Louisville --
wife Julie, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee, and three of their four
children who are still at home.
The tribunal is racing to meet a deadline to finish its work by
2008, with all appeals concluded by 2010.
Two of the most notorious figures of the Balkan wars are still at
large: former Bosnian President Radovan Karadzic and his top
military commander, Ratko Mladic, who have been charged with
genocide relating to the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in
Srebrenica in July 1995.
The court has transferred some cases involving less serious offenses
to courts under its oversight in former Yugoslavian countries, where
Apperson said he knows many of the judges from his travels. He's
also visited sites of mass graves in the former Yugoslavia and seen
photos of the atrocities.
"This is really about human rights," Apperson said of the tribunal.
"It's a high calling."
Reporter Kay Stewart can be reached at (502) 582-4114.
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