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"Century knocked off man's terror-support sentence"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post comes from the headline of this AP story, which gets started this way: In the shadow of 9/11, the conviction and 155-year sentence handed down to Hezbollah supporter Mohamad Hammoud was considered a milestone in the fight against terrorism and a strong warning to people who sent money to support militant groups. A federal judge knocked more than a century off that sentence Thursday, saying it turned out to be "grossly disproportionate" for the first man convicted under a key terror-fighting legal strategy. Instead, Judge Graham Mullen ordered Hammoud to serve 30 years in prison for smuggling cigarettes and sending $3,500 of the profits to Hezbollah.  The new sentence means the 37-year-old from Lebanon will spend an additional two decades in prison, then likely be deported to his homeland...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 27, 2011 (boomark / email).