Legal News

Are Feds Overpromising and Underdelivering in Terrorism Cases?

By Dan Slater

After the second mistrial was declared yesterday in the case of the six Miami men charged with plotting to bomb the Sears Tower, the NYT is asking whether, under the Bush administration, terrorism arrests are being over-politicized and under-prosecuted. (Click here for an AP report on the mistrial.)

“In a lot of these cases, the government has really oversold what it’s got,” Jenny Martinez, an associate professor of law at Stanford who was involved in the Jose Padilla terrorism case, told the Times. “They’ve held these huge press conferences at the beginning that set up these expectations that the government cannot fulfill.”

When the seven men from the Liberty City area of Miami were arrested a few months before the 2006 elections, then-AG Alberto Gonzales said the men had been taped promising to fight a “full ground war against the United States.” But testimony at trial, reports the Times, showed that a search by the FBI of what it called the group’s headquarters did not find guns, explosives or blueprints for an attack. Also, defense lawyers emphasize that the defendants made their most aggressive comments in response to questions or comments by a bureau agents posing as operatives of Al Qaeda and offering $50,000 to help the plot.

The first trial ended in December with an acquittal for one of the seven, Lyglenson Lemorin, and a mistrial for the other six. In the second trial followed a similar path, both sides reportedly laid out many of the same arguments and again the jury deadlocked.

Bruce J. Winick, a law professor at the University of Miami who followed the case, told the Times that the mistrial showed public skepticism of the pre-emptive terrorism-related arrests. “Politics played too important a role in this prosecution,” Professor Winick said. “We should follow our normal prosecution pattern, which is to gather the evidence.”

A statement from the office of the US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said a decision on a retrial would be announced at a hearing next Wednesday.

Photo: Associated Press

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 17, 2008 (boomark / email).