Free Republic

4 Decades After Shooting, Effort to Make Punishment Fit the Crime By CATRIN EINHORN Published: February 23, 2008 CHICAGO — What punishment should be imposed on a man who shot a police officer almost 40 years ago and fled to Canada, but went on to live an upstanding life as a husband and father who worked in a library?**snip** In 2004, he was arrested, but fought extradition. Last month he gave up that fight, saying he was inspired by the new political climate he saw in Chicago, symbolized, he said, by the support of Mayor Richard M. Daley and other...

A Toronto judge has ordered Joseph Pannell be extradited to the United States. A Toronto judge ruled Friday that a man should be extradited to the U.S. to face attempted murder charges for a 35-year-old shooting. Reputed former Black Panther Joseph Pannell is alleged to have shot and paralyzed Chicago police officer Terrance Knox. He's been wanted in the U.S. since skipping bail on two occasions, the first time in 1971 and the second in 1973, when he fled to Canada. Pannell, who went by the name Gary Freeman, had worked as a researcher with the Toronto Public Library for...

A Canadian judge on Friday ordered a former Black Panther-turned-librarian back to Chicago to face charges that he tried to kill a police officer in 1969. Joseph Pannell was picked up in Toronto last year after being a fugitive since 1974 on charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery. He was accused of shooting Chicago police Officer Terrence Knox. Pannell, who was 55 when he was arrested last year, is also charged with jumping bail. Knox, who survived the attack, called the decision Friday by Justice David Watt "the most significant ruling in the case." "I never thought they would...