Anne Sacoolas, the US woman accused of killing a British teenager while driving on the wrong side of the road in England, is expected to face criminal proceedings in the UK early next year, the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Monday.
The 44-year-old is charged with causing 19-year-old Briton Harry Dunn’s death in August 2019 by dangerous driving.
“The case will be heard at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 18 January,” the CPS said. “Anne Sacoolas has a right to a fair trial. It is extremely important there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice any proceedings.”
“While the challenges and complexity of this case are well known, we remain committed to securing justice in this matter,” it added.
Previous attempts to resolve the incident in court have foundered, with the United States refusing to extradite Sacoolas to the UK.
Despite the CPS announcement, a spokesperson for Arnold and Porter, the law firm representing Sacoolas, told CNN there is currently no agreement to have their client appear in a hearing.
“While we have always been willing to discuss a virtual hearing, there is no agreement at this time,” a spokesperson for Arnold and Porter told CNN by text message.
CNN has reached out to Sacoolas’ representatives for clarification.
Dunn family reacts
Sacoolas has previously admitted driving on the wrong side of the road at the time of the crash. After the deadly collision outside RAF Croughton, a US military base in England where her husband worked as a diplomat, Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and returned to the US.
The incident sparked ongoing diplomatic tensions between the two countries, with the US State Department in January 2020 rejecting an extradition request to return her to the UK for prosecution.
In June, then-British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said UK prosecutors could seek a “virtual trial” of Sacoolas. “The US has not agreed to the extradition, but the path is clear for the legal authorities in the UK to approach Anne Sacoolas’s lawyers – without any problem from the US government – to see whether some kind of virtual trial or process could allow some accountability and some solace and some justice for the Dunn family,” he said in an interview with the BBC.
Dunn’s parents also brought a civil lawsuit for damages against her in Virginia, where she lives with her husband, having reached a “resolution” in September.
On Monday, they said they welcomed the prospect of a court hearing in their son’s case, with his mother saying it had left them feeling “very emotional.”
“It’s been an exhausting and frustrating time since Harry’s death but my family and I are feeling very emotional and overwhelmed having just the learned the news that Mrs. Sacoolas is now to face our justice system,” Charlotte Charles said in a statement on Monday. “It is all that we asked for following Harry’s death.”
Dunn’s father, Tim Dunn, said however that he still couldn’t forgive the US government for allowing Sacoolas to retain diplomatic immunity. “I wish our Government could have done more to stop this injustice and it should not have been down to us to have to fight as hard as we have had to,” he said.
US State Department principal deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter said she didn’t “have anything new to announce” when asked about the development in the UK during a State Department briefing Monday.
‘National security’ considerations around Sacoolas
Since the 2019 incident, Sacoolas has been described as “the wife of an American diplomat.”
However, the US civil proceedings have prompted questions over her employment in England, whether she was working for the State Department when the accident occurred, and if her work was relevant to the case.
In an unexpected move in July, lawyers for the US government tried to suppress details surrounding Sacoolas’ employment citing “national security.” It was the first time the US government admitted publicly that Anne Sacoolas, and not just her husband, “were employees of the United States Government at the time” of the crash.
When the crash occurred in 2019 Jonathan Sacoolas was known as an intelligence officer stationed as “administrative and technical staff” at RAF Croughton, a military base used as an intelligence-gathering hub by the CIA and NSA. But Anne Sacoolas “was notified to the UK Government by the US as a spouse with no official role,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman told reporters in February 2021.
The US government argues that the details of who Sacoolas was working for in England wasn’t important to the civil case because “information concerning the United States Government has little to no relevance to an adjudication of any remaining issues in this case.”
But it could be significant as the US and UK agreed in the mid-1990s that American intelligence officers posted to RAF Croughton would not be able to claim diplomatic immunity for any criminal incidents that occur outside the US base.
If it had been revealed in the weeks after Dunn’s death that Anne Sacoolas was employed by the US government in intelligence work, she may not as easily have been able to assert the diplomatic immunity of a spouse and leave the country, the Dunn family believes.
CNN’s Jonny Hallam, Jennifer Hansler and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this report.
