American mom accused of killing 2 kids fights to stay in UK over potential life sentence: report
An English attorney for a Colorado woman accused of killing her two young children in December 2023 argued against the possibility of extraditing her from the United Kingdom back to the United States in a London courtroom this week.
U.K. authorities took Kimberlee Singler into custody on Dec. 30, 2023 after she was accused by Colorado authorities of killing her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and injuring her 11-year-old daughter before she allegedly fled overseas.
Her attorney, Edward Fitzgerald, Kings Counsel (KC), who also represented Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, argued that extraditing Singler to the United States would violate the European Convention of Human Rights, because she would not be eligible for parole if convicted, according to NBC News affiliate KOAA.
Judge John Zani is expected to make a decision on Singler’s extradition on Jan. 24.
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Singler, 36, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of child abuse and one count of assault.
Joel Smith, KC, the attorney representing the United States in the U.K. extradition case, said in September when Singler’s extradition proceedings began that Singler allegedly killed her two children and tried to kill the third during an ongoing and contentious custody battle between her and her husband, NBC reported at the time.
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“She shot the first child in the head and stabbed her in the neck, she shot the second child to the head and stabbed her in the neck. She attacked the third child to the neck with a knife causing serious lacerations,” Smith said, according to NBC.
In their investigation of the crime scene in December 2023, Colorado authorities located spent rounds, a blood-stained knife and empty bottles of sleeping pills in a trash can. Police found the two dead children in bed together.
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Colorado Springs Police said at the time of the crime that they received a 911 call reporting a burglary from Singler’s address, but they later found the report to be “unfounded.”
“[The surviving child] said that the defendant had told the three children to close their eyes, she guided the first two children into the bedroom and approached the third child and told her to close her eyes. She then cut her to the side of the neck,” Smith said in September, according to NBC.
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Smith argued in September that a governor could eventually grant Singler clemency if she is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Fitzgerald, meanwhile, said life sentences without the possibility of parole in the U.K. are “totally alien to us.” There were 63 people serving life sentences in the U.K. two months ago, whereas the U.S. had 49,000 people serving life sentences, Smith said, according to NBC.