Samuel Sheinbein

Samuel Sheinbein (; 25 July 1980 – 23 February 2014) was an American-Israeli convicted murderer. On 16 September 1997, Sheinbein, a 17-year-old senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Aaron Benjamin Needle, a former classmate, killed Alfredo "Freddy" Enrique Tello, Jr. They subsequently dismembered and burned the corpse in Aspen Hill, Maryland. Sheinbein fled to Israel, where his father who had Israeli citizenship was born. At the time, Israeli law prohibited extradition of Israeli citizens.

The case strained U.S.–Israeli relations and prompted an overhaul of Israeli extradition policy, which now requires a defendant seeking to avoid extradition to also demonstrate a "residential connection" to Israel. The Washington Post wrote that it became "a sensational legal tug of war involving Congress, the State and Justice departments and the upper echelons of Israel's political and judicial establishments". Sheinbein sought someone to murder as practice for his intended target, according to the Montgomery County, Maryland Deputy State's Attorney, John McCarthy.

In September 1997, Needle had gotten into an altercation in which Tello had punched Needle in front of Choi, on whom Needle had had a crush. Choi told police that Needle appeared to be embarrassed and immediately called his friend Sam. According to McCarthy, this event led to Needle giving Sheinbein his practice victim. The realtor called the Montgomery County Police Department and officers quickly responded to the residence. Investigators determined the contents of the garbage bags were human remains and ruled it as a homicide. Police found the Makita electric circular saw used to dismember the victim at the scene.

Israel

Flight to Israel Sheinbein evaded apprehension by Maryland police and fled to Israel with the help of his father, Sol Sheinbein, an attorney with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. Sol allegedly brought Samuel a passport, purchased an airline ticket to Tel Aviv, and drove him to John F. Kennedy International Airport to flee the United States. On September 25, 1997, he survived an overdose of sleeping pills and wine in what was thought to have been a suicide attempt. Police found an apparent suicide letter to his family in his hotel room, and Sheinbein was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Sheinbein accepted the idea, but Maryland prosecutors rejected it. In September 1998, Ravid ruled that Sheinbein could be extradited because he had no meaningful connections to the State of Israel, used a U.S. passport, and had never lived in Israel, thus was insufficiently a citizen deserving protection under Israeli law. The court's majority opinion, authored by Justice Theodor Or, expressed the position that the law prohibited Sheinbein's extradition, and the district court's ruling implied different levels of Israeli citizenship. In spite of this, Or wrote that it would have been ideal had Sheinbein been tried in the United States: "One can wonder if there is any justification for protecting someone from extradition when that person is not a resident and has no connection to Israel. It is hard to see any injustice when citizens have to stand trial for crimes they committed in a country which is the very center of their lives."

In August 1999, Sheinbein accepted a plea bargain with prosecutors, and in September he confessed to murdering Tello. In October, a three-judge panel at Tel Aviv District Court sentenced him to 24 years in prison, with eligibility for prison furloughs after 4 years and parole after 16 years. It was reportedly the harshest sentence that had ever been imposed in Israel for a crime committed by a minor; previously, no minor had been given a sentence longer than 20 years. This claim has been disputed. Even after Sheinbein's conviction, the state of Maryland maintained a warrant for his arrest, and the United States issued an Interpol warrant, meaning that Sheinbein faced prosecution in the United States if he had ever returned, and faced extradition to the United States if he had traveled to any Interpol member country, regardless of whether he served time in Israel.

Sheinbein was imprisoned in a juvenile detention center until he turned 18, after which he was moved to Ayalon Prison, a maximum-security prison in Ramla. Later, he was transferred to Rimonim Prison, a maximum-security prison in Even Yehuda, near Netanya. He eventually became eligible for weekend furloughs, and was granted 96 such furloughs during his incarceration. In prison, Sheinbein worked in the wood shop and took university courses, eventually gaining a degree in computers. He generally displayed good behavior in prison. Months before his death, the prison spokeswoman described him as a "good prisoner". However, according to his attorney Orit Hayoun, he never received psychological counseling. Israel and the United States also signed a protocol on July 6, 2005, providing for "reciprocal extradition of persons charged with or convicted of an offense, including an attempt or conspiracy to commit an offense, which is punishable under the laws in both Parties by deprivation of liberty for a period of one year or by more severe penalty".

Sol Sheinbein was charged with obstruction of justice in the United States. He is wanted on an arrest warrant for hindering or obstructing a police investigation, but because his crime was a misdemeanor, he was not extraditable. In 2002, he was disbarred as a lawyer in Maryland by the Maryland Court of Appeals, and in 2004, he was disbarred as a lawyer in Washington, D.C., by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. In 2004, the United States Patent and Trademark Office began disciplinary proceedings against him, and the following year revoked his patent attorney license, which Sheinbein unsuccessfully appealed. Six officials and one prisoner were wounded by Sheinbein. The shooting occurred one year before Sheinbein would have been eligible to apply for parole. Police traced the gun to a resident of central Israel whose gun had been stolen a year before. It was reportedly "the first known case in Israel of an inmate opening fire inside a secured compound". A writer for Tablet Magazine called the fact that Sheinbein was able to acquire a gun "the latest of several major IPS screw-ups".

In popular culture "Return", an episode of Law & Order from 2000, was based on the case.

The Sheinbein case was cited in the tenth episode of the 2014 first season of Serial. During the bail proceedings in the trial of Adnan Syed, the Baltimore prosecutor urged the judge to refuse bail as she didn't "want another Sheinbein" situation on their hands, alluding to concerns that Syed would flee to Pakistan.