Legal News

On Miriam Siefer, the Woman Who Will Represent Abdulmutallab

By Ashby Jones

On Christmas Day, as many lawyers were opening gifts of sweaters and cufflinks, coffee mugs and Paper Chase DVDs, Detroit lawyer Miriam Siefer unwittingly got a different kind of gift, a high-profile terrorism client.

Siefer, the chief counsel of the Federal Defender Office in Detroit, will represent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old charged with trying to blow up a Christmas Day flight. Click here for the WSJ story, from Amir Efrati.

Defense lawyers with experience in terrorism-related cases say Siefer’s latest job isn’t going to be easy, in part because of Abdulmutallab’s alleged statements after the incident. Among other things, passengers have said Abdulmutallab told them he had an “explosive device” after passengers and crew put out a fire that had started in his lap. He also allegedly told investigators he had affiliations with al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, who gave him the device and detonation instructions to blow up the plane.

Despite the media coverage, Margaret Sind Raben, a defense lawyer in Detroit who has known Siefer for decades, said she thinks “Miriam will go into this with the assumption and presumption that her client is innocent.”

One potential challenge is if the defendant isn’t cooperative. Defendants like Abdulmutallab “generally start with their backs to us,” Raben said. “You have to work to gain their trust.”

It won’t be Siefer’s first foray into terrorism cases. The lawyer has handled cases involving disturbances on other Northwest flights, including one in which a man pleaded guilty after illegally transporting ammunition and saying he was traveling overseas to kill Osama bin Laden.

In 2003, Siefer’s office defended an immigrant accused of being part of a terrorist “sleeper cell” in Detroit. Her office’s client was convicted, but a year later the cases were dismissed after the Justice Department said its lead prosecutor hid evidence that could have helped the defense.

A defense lawyer’s goal in the Abdulmutallab case would be to understand why he was on the Northwest flight with explosive material, said James Thomas, a Detroit attorney who represented a defendant in the 2003 terrorism case.

“How does a privileged young man with an education get turned?” Thomas said of Abdulmutallab, who is the son of a prominent Nigerian banker and received an engineering degree from University College London. “It’s inconsistent with the way he was raised, and if there was undue influence on him,” it could be raised as a defense at trial or could help him get a lesser sentence, he said.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 04, 2010 (boomark / email).