I remember the day a long time ago, early winter 2005, when my friend and neighbor Dean Pineles retired as a Vermont trial judge. After a long career on the bench, Dean called to say he’d stepped down and was on his way to buy a ski pass.
Most of us when we retire from a job well done would maybe tend a garden, adopt a sport, volunteer for this or that. And, in fact, for a while Dean did just that: EMT with Stowe Rescue, Stowe Development Review Board, Copley Hospital Board. Dean’s wife, Kristina Stahlbrand, after a wonderful career with the South Burlington School System, seemed as well to be settling into enjoying life in our fair town. But retirement has not gone the typical route for Dean and Kristina.
Not content to visit local coffee shops and pontificate about the world, Dean took a different path. He became a criminal court judge in war-scarred Kosovo.
Until recently serving with the European Union Rule of Law Project (EULEX), under a mandate from the United Nations, one of Dean’s last rulings before returning home was to hand down the decision in the so-called Medicus Case — a high-profile international case breaking up an organ trafficking ring (mentioned in a recent New Yorker article).
Dean’s road to Kosovo was long but not unexpected. While still a Vermont trial court judge, he traveled a number of times to the Russian Province of Keralia with the Vermont/Keralia Rule of Law Project, helping that court system try to become an independent and transparent judiciary.
In 2008 Dean and Kristina moved to the Republic of Georgia where Dean volunteered as part of an American Bar Association team, advising the Georgian Judiciary on much needed improvements, and Kristina taught at the university. The small matter of a Russian invasion and a mandatory evacuation to Armenia disrupted the assignment.
And here is a detail about how Dean and Kristina approach being ex-pat transplants. They would not evacuate to Armenia without their dear dog Piper (and we won’t go into the paperwork required to bring the dog to Georgia in the first place). Despite the order to evacuate as the Russians approached, Dean and Kristina frantically secured veterinary notes so they could take their little Toto from Tbilisi to Yerevan. The three evacuated in a beat-up old van with a crazy driver at the wheel, four other evacuees and two cats, not knowing if they’d make it — mostly because of the state of the van and the driving, not the Russian MIGs. After roughly three weeks as exiles in Yerevan, Armenia, they returned to Tbilisi to finish the assignment in a much-changed Georgia.
I thought Dean might settle down after Georgia, having successfully rebelled a bit against retirement. I was wrong. In less than a year, Dean was offered the Kosovo job.
Posted first in the small city of Prizren, Dean and Kristina were awakened every morning by the call to prayer from one of dozens of mosques in this conservative, decidedly Ottoman and Muslim city. Working with one other western judge and one local one, Dean began hearing the hardest cases Kosovo had to offer. He was eventually transferred to Pristina, Kosovo’s capital city, when he was selected to be on the panel for the Medicus case.
As Dean worked his tour as a criminal court judge in Kosovo, Kristina developed an adventure of her own making.
In Prizren, Kristina taught at the newly formed university, teaching writing to advanced students of English and completing a German to English translation project for the German rector. When Dean was transferred to Pristina, Kristina joined the faculty of the American University in Kosovo/Rochester Institute of Technology, where she taught a communicating in business course.
Teaching 25 eager students, Kristina concentrated the work on ethics and teamwork while teaching effective communication skills (verbal and written) for the international workplace. Much like Dean’s work with the courts, Kristina’s work with some of the best students of Kosovo gave her a chance to influence those who will form the future of the country. She also began fundraising with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Pristina University Hospital. The unit is wholly under-funded and needs “every single thing under the sun, from incubators to soap,” Kristina said.
During Dean’s tenure with the court, two cases stand out. In the “Klecka” case, a war crimes case against a Kosovar hero of the fight against Serbia, Dean filed an unprecedented dissenting opinion on a crux matter of evidence. Without the evidence the case was dead. Upon appeal, the Supreme Court adopted Dean’s reasoning, which led to the reopening of the controversial trial against Kosovo Liberation Army hero Fatmir Limaj, who allegedly committed war crimes against Serb prisoners of war detained in a village in Kosovo.
In the “Medicus” case, Dean and two other judges presided over a 19-month trial involving charges of coercing victims to give up kidneys for the black-market organ trade. The international case involved victims throughout Eastern and Central Europe, a conspiracy in Turkey and secret surgeries in Kosovo. On April 29, Dean read the 15-page verdict to a packed courtroom, handing out sentences ranging from one to eight years against three defendants.
And now, Dean, Kristina and Piper are home in Stowe. But two and a half years meting justice in a land unaccustomed to the niceties of judicial process seems not to have tamed Dean’s interest in the work. After talking about his adventures over a scotch (“to help me not miss the homemade Rakia,” Dean said, referring to the local 90 proof liquor), I asked him if he was glad to be home. He hesitated for a second and chuckled. “I think so,” he said. Another hesitation. “I loved going to work every day. It was exciting.”
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