Snider to be extradited

A federal magistrate judge ruled last week that a former Marshall University student could be… A federal magistrate judge ruled last week that a former Marshall University student could be extradited to South Korean authorities to face charges for last year’s murder of Pitt student Jamie Lynn Penich, according to the magistrate’s office.

After a two-day hearing in Huntingdon, W.Va., Judge Maurice Taylor Jr. ruled on Friday that there was probable cause to extradite 21-year-old Kenzi Snider to the Republic of Korea to face the death penalty on charges that she beat and kicked Penich to death in a Seoul motel room in March 2001.

Both were part of a group of American exchange students studying in South Korea. Since her arrest on Feb. 28, Snider has been incarcerated at South Central Regional Jail in Charleston, W.Va.

Snider’s fate now rests in the hands of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who will make the final judgment on Snider’s extradition.

According to the Web site of the U.S. Department of State, “The secretary of state may order that a person be surrendered. The fugitive must then be removed from the U.S. within two calendar months of the judge’s committal order.”

Taylor stayed the ruling for 30 days to allow for Snider to appeal, but as of Monday, Snider’s defense team was unsure if they would appeal, according to Ed Weis, Snider’s defense attorney.

Weis said he was disappointed with the judge’s determination because of efforts to challenge Snider’s confession. He said the confession is questionable because it was not recorded and there was no physical evidence to support the information provided by Snider.

Weis pointed to the fact that no blood or DNA transferred from Penich to Snider in what FBI agents called “a very bloody scene.”

Weis said he hired expert witness Richard Ofshe, a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley, to challenge the confession. Ofshe concluded that Snider might have been pressured by FBI and U.S. Army investigators to confess to a crime she did not commit, according to Weis. He said investigators may have used interrogation techniques that caused her to doubt her own recollection of the events, Weis said.

Taylor saw no evidence of this, according to a press officer in the magistrate’s office.

The officer noted that the ruling is an order for Snider to be extradited to face trial; it is not a conviction of any sort. South Korea has “satisfied the legal requirements for extradition … and has established probable cause that Snider killed Penich,” the officer said.

“Therefore, the court found Snider extraditable,” the officer said.