Vang was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. An immigration judge issued Vang a final order of removal on October 31, 2006 after his conviction.
Minnesota’s Board of Pardons, composed of Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, granted his clemency. (They noted that the victim wrote a letter on his behalf.) They also pardoned another Laotian criminal illegal alien — a convicted armed robber — before he could be deported.
At the time, Walz wrongly referred to Vang as a “citizen”:
“I can find no reason how Minnesota will be safer or better if Mr. Vang is deported to a country he has not been to since he was a child.I do not see how it would serve his family, nor the economic interest where we have a taxpaying citizen who is creating job growth and living a life free from any criminal activity.
Rubio told Fox News:
“Just weeks ago, a foreign child rapist was freed to once again endanger America’s children after receiving a pardon from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Tue Lue Vang admitted to committing heinous crimes against a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He attempted to pay his victim for her silence and dismissed his acts of child abuse as a ‘minor thing.’
Just days before he was scheduled to be deported, the Minnesota Governor pardoned him, setting him free to endanger American families once again.”
He added, “Americans should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators — shielded from deportation by their own elected officials — could endanger them or their children.”
Vang’s use of Laotian culture was notable for some of us who have spoken or written about “the cultural defense.”
I have long drawn the line in the use of the cultural defense on such violent acts. However, troubling outliers remain in the cases. In January 1985, Japanese immigrant Fumiko Kimura tried to commit oyako-shinju (or parent-child suicide) after learning of her husband’s infidelity. She walked her infant daughter and 4-year-old son in the frigid ocean off Santa Monica. The children drowned, but she was rescued. While she had lived in the United States for some 14 years, she claimed the cultural defense (even though oyako-shinju is illegal in Japan). She was successful. Kimura received just one year in jail and five years’ probation. She then reunited with her husband.
There have been several cases involving “marriage by capture.” We have had some cases related to the custom of zij poj niam, particularly in relation to the Hmong culture, where a man abducts a woman he intends to marry and takes her to his family home. The woman is expected to resist as a sign of her virtue.
In a prior case, Kong Moua, a Hmong tribesman, drove to the Fresno City College campus and kidnapped a young woman from her job in the student finance office. She took her to his cousin’s house, but the Hmong woman did not believe in the cultural practice and called police.
Charged with rape and kidnapping, the defense successfully claimed the cultural defense. It secured a lesser charge of false imprisonment, and then the judge sentenced Kong Moua to just 120 days in jail and fined him $1,000, with only $900 of that going to the victim as reparations.
It is unclear whether Vang was making such a claim, but most judges would reject it. The effort by Walz to keep him in the United States was equally dubious as a constitutional matter.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”