CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair

March 18, 2010

ARE WE ALL POTENTIAL JIHADISTS?

Filed under: Anti-Terrorism Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 2:28 am

Arrest of “Jihad Jane” Adds Fuel to Fight Against Racial Profiling

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Leonard Pitts is an excellent columnist. He recently wrote a piece about Colleen LaRose, the Pennsylvania housewife turned Islamic jihadist, whose arrest made it abundantly clear why airport security is not only necessary but essential. Whether conscious or not, most Americans believe “terrorists” can be easily profiled by their physical appearance,” unusual” accents, the clothes they wear, or the facial hair they sport. “Terrorists” are not white, blond, and mainstream in dress and mannerisms. American media has convinced us that real terrorists are either bearded Arabs or dark-skinned Africans who dress like Muslims.

If Timothy McVeigh taught us anything, it should be that individuals willing to inflict mass casualties on Americans in the name of “government opposition” come in all sizes, stripes, and colors. The arrest of LaRose, dubbed “Jihad Jane” by either the media or law enforcement officials, reinforces the McVeigh lesson. A blond, green-eyed former Texas teenager, LaRose would not have triggered much, if any, interest from fellow passengers had she boarded an airliner for any destination in America with bomb-making material concealed somewhere on her body or in her possessions.

Collen LaRose and her counterpart, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez who was arrested several days after LaRose in connection with an international terror plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who offended many Muslims world-wide with his cartoons, are the very reason why all Americans must undergo strict security checks and monitoring before boarding airliners in this country and why there should be no “profile” for terrorists. As Mr. Pitts wrote in his column:

“[The LaRose arrest] ought to serve as a rebuke to the guy standing in the airport security line grumbling at how the TSA agent is running his wand over some dewy-eyed grandmother who obviously isn’t a threat. Even more, it should rebuke pundits like Cal Thomas, Ann Coulter, and Kathleen Parker, who, in the wake of 9/11 argued for ethnic profiling in airport security. Pat down swarthy, bearded young men with Middle Eastern accents and exotic headgear, they said, and leave the rest of us alone.

(more…)

March 14, 2010

BAD MOON ON THE RISE

Filed under: Anti-Terrorism Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 3:52 pm

Keep America Safe: Right Wing Fanatics Attack Lawyers, Constitution, and Fundamental Right to Legal Representation

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Every major movement or cause throughout this nation’s history which sought constitutional protections for those the government had denied, from racial minorities ostracized by segregationists laws to those persecuted for their religious beliefs, was led by lawyers. Our fundamental notions of social justice, which are grounded in this nation’s Bill of Rights and in Federal and state constitutions form the original colonies, exist because of the courage of lawyers to form, frame and preserve those notions. Lawyers have always borne the brunt of criticism from political conservatives who really believe in many respects that our government should be run as a totalitarian state like fascism. We saw this tragic reality when the Klu Klux Klan was once one of the most powerful political forces in this country, when McCarthyism’s “guilt by association” became the rule of law, and when segregationists labeled civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King “agents of communism.” It was lawyers who led the way in bringing about an end to the underlying fanatical political ideology that created and sustained the government-sponsored repression of social justice during each of these dark moments in our nation’s history.

This repressive McCarthyism-like political ideology has once again reared its ugly head. This time the charge is being led by a conservative political group called Keep America Safe. The target of the group’s anti-Democratic efforts are lawyers who represent suspected terrorists, and in particular government lawyers who, as the New York Times reported in a March 9, 2010 article by John Schwartz, “worked in the past on behalf of detained terrorism suspects.”

Keep America Safe is led by Liz Cheney, the daughter of former White House Vice-President Dick Cheney who has repeatedly expressed his disdain for anyone who believes terror suspects enjoy “rights.” Keep America Safe earlier this month released a video that questioned the loyalty of a number of U.S. Justice Department lawyers in the Obama administration who have represented Guantanamo Bay prison detainees before the courts.

The Keep America Safe video is so far out there in McCarthyism’s lunatic right fringe that even some traditional mainstream conservative political groups, like the Federalist Society, have rebuked it on the fundamental constitutional principle that even the most unpopular individual charged with an offense against the laws of this country has a right to a lawyer. Perhaps Liz Cheney was buoyed by the recent stunning upset election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown who made the “war on terror” the central feature of his campaign with rhetoric like the government should not be “wasting” money providing lawyers to terrorists. We suspect Ms. Cheney and Keep America Safe wanted to curry favor with those elements of the Tea Party movement who regularly show up at rallies dressed in revolutionary war garb waving signs proclaiming the government has been taken over by socialists.

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February 5, 2010

WHO IS AAFIA SIDDIQUI – TERRORIST OR GOVERNMENT PAWN?

Filed under: Anti-Terrorism Lawyer — Tags: , , , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 3:36 pm

The Tragic Case of the “The Gray Lady of Bagram”

By:  Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

The U.S. Government contends Aafia Siddiqui’s alleged links to terrorism began in June 2001—some three months before the 9/11 terror attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers. According to government sources, Siddiqui made a trip from Quetta, Pakistan to Monrovia, Liberia, where she was met by a car and driven to the Hotel Boulevard, a known al Qaeda safe house. A week later Siddiqui allegedly left Monrovia in the same inauspicious manner in which she arrived—the only difference being is that she carried with her a large parcel of Africa’s illegal diamonds, a hard-to-trace but key funding source for al Qaeda’s terror operations.

Nearly three years later on May 26, 2004 former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller held a new conference during which they announced the government had received reports that al Qaeda planned terror attacks in the U.S. that summer or fall. Director Mueller specifically named Aafia Siddiqui as “an al-Qaeda operative and facilitator” and one of the seven al-Qaeda suspects being sought in connection with the impending terror plots. Attorney General Ashcroft added the seven suspects posed “a clear and present danger” to America and should be “considered armed and dangerous.”

As soon as Siddiqui’s photo was displayed during the Ashcroft/Mueller news conference an informant was convinced Siddiqui was the same woman who went to Monrovia in June 2001 and left with the package of illegal diamonds. The informant called the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which was investigating Africa’s illegal diamond trade, and reported Siddiqui’s alleged ties to the diamond trade on behalf of al Qaeda.

Siddiqui’s family vigorously disputes the notion that Aafia was ever in Monrovia. They say she was living in the Back Bay Manor in Roxbury, Massachusetts taking care of her own three children and her sister’s child (while the sister finished a fellowship in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital), as well as being a wife to her husband who was an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

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January 9, 2010

MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT OF 2009

Filed under: Federal Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 3:06 am

Fear Mongers Continue Calls for Military Tribunals to Avoid Burdens of Complying with Constitution and Rule of Law

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

The day after we posted our blog “Argument Against Gitmo Closure Defeated By Act of Terrorism” (Dec. 28, 2009), in which we pointed out that Republican opponents of the Obama administration’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay, had not suggested that Christmas Day attempted airline bomber Umar Farouck Abdulmutallab be tried before a military tribunal rather than in a civilian court, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) led an awakened chorus of Republican voices saying Abdulmutallab should not be tried as a “criminal defendant” in a federal civilian court but rather as a “terrorist” before a military tribunal.

“I think that the administration has made a mistake by treating this terrorist as a common criminal … by putting him into the criminal justice system,” King stated in a December 29 interview with NBC. “I wish they would have put him into a military tribunal so we could get as much intelligence and information out of him as we could … My concern is that we did miss the opportunity because once we put him into the criminal justice system, he gets a lawyer and Miranda rights.”

King’s statements suggest that military interrogators would have been able to employ the “harsh interrogation methods” long advocated by former Vice President Dick Cheney (such as water boarding, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, etc.) to secure the “intelligence and information” the congressman assumes Abdulmutallab possesses. Apparently Rep. King, along with the others who share this point of view, forgot that in 2005 Congress (a body to which the New York representative belongs) passed the Detainee Treatment Act which prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of “terror suspects” during military or CIA interrogations. Torture is no longer a permissible method to extract “intelligence and information” from terror suspects, despite Dick Cheney’s lamentations to the contrary.

Rep. King, who is a ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, must have also forgotten (or has never been aware) that in October 2009 President Obama signed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (which is called the “Military Commissions Act of 2009”) which significantly altered the legal landscape in the interrogation of “terror suspects.” The previous Military Commissions Act, enacted by King and his congressional colleagues in 2006, allowed coerced statements obtained through torture to be admitted into evidence against terror suspects tried before military tribunals. The new Act, which was law at the time of Abdulmutallab’s arrest, no longer permits the use of such statements obtained through the “harsh interrogation” techniques supported by Dick Cheney and others. In a recent Findlaw column, Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner discussed the provisions of the revised 2009 Act:

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December 28, 2009

ARGUMENT AGAINST GITMO CLOSURE DEFEATED BY ACT OF TERRORISM

Filed under: Federal Crimes Lawyer — Tags: , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 1:04 pm

Recent Arrest, Detention and Charging of Attempted Airplane Bomber Illustrate Fed’s Ability to Handle Terror Suspects in Civilian Courts

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Two recent decisions by President Obama’s administration has drawn intense criticism designed to manipulate the natural fear Americans have of terrorism since 9/11: the decision to try the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), and his co-conspirators, in a New York federal civilian court and the decision to transfer “terror suspects” currently housed at the U.S. detention facility (“Gitmo”) in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois.

The critics, fueled primarily by a Republican political agenda to undermine the Obama administration and regain future control of the White House and Congress, have charged that confining and trying terror suspects on American soil would somehow endanger the American public with future terror attacks. If these charges were not so politically motivated and so readily accepted by many Americans, who believe every word launched out of the mouths of conservative wing nuts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, they could be casually dismissed laughably ludicrous.

The Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight by 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who allegedly attempted to detonate the high explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) as the plane approached the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport for landing underscores this point. The Abdulmutallab terror attack was thwarted because his detonator either malfunctioned, or he did not correctly use it, and by the heroic efforts of fellow passengers who attacked and subdued the terrorist before he could fulfill his objective: to blow up an American plane on American soil on Christmas Day.

This attempted terror attack illustrate precisely why the politically-motivated criticisms of the decision to try KSM in federal civilian court and to house Gitmo prisoners in a super-max federal penal facility are in fact so wrong-headed. Abdulmutallab was charged in federal district court the day after Christmas. The United States Justice Department issued the following “press release” entitled “Nigerian National Charged with Attempting to Destroy Northwest Airlines Aircraft:”

(more…)

December 3, 2009

TRYING KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMAD IN FEDERAL COURT IS NOT END OF WORLD

Filed under: Anti-Terrorism Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 3:25 am

Federal Trials Open to the Public, for Terrorism Cases Support American Constitutional Concepts of Fair Trials, Justice

By Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

While there are many security and legal problems associated with major terrorism trials conducted in federal courts in the United States, Republican critics of the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (“KSM”) in a New York federal court have methodically spread unnecessary fear in order to politicize that decision. What may be good for the country, much less our legal system, does not factor into their conservative political agenda to undermine the Obama presidency at every turn. It’s tantamount to an irresponsible lunatic standing up in a crowded theater and hollering “fire” just to see how much panic and chaos he can cause.

To begin with, the KSM civilian trial critics charge that the “9/11 mastermind” and his 9/11 co-conspirators will use their incarceration in a federal penal facility to spread their message of terror both within and outside the facility. The critics fail to inform the public that KSM and his co-conspirators will probably be housed in Unit 10 South of the Special Housing Unit in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (“MCC”) located in Manhattan. Unit 10 South is considered the most secure housing unit in any federal facility operated by the Federal Bureau of Prison (“BOP”) in the New York City area. 1/ It’s an ultra maximum security unit used almost exclusively to house terrorism suspects and other offenders who pose a proven danger to other inmates or prison guards. Placement in Unit 10 South has been called the “’nuclear option’ of indefinite solitary confinement.” 2/

Federal regulations grant the BOP tremendous authority to impose “special administrative measures (“SAMs”) on terror suspects for the specific reason of preventing them from instigating acts of terrorism or violence. These regulations, codified in 28 CFR 501.3, provide:

(a) Upon direction of the Attorney General, the Director, Bureau of Prisons, may authorize the Warden to implement special administrative measures that are reasonably necessary to protect persons against the risk of death or serious bodily injury. These procedures may be implemented upon written notification to the Director, Bureau of Prisons, by the Attorney General or, at the Attorney General’s direction, by the head of a federal law enforcement agency, or the head of a member agency of the United States intelligence community, that there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons, or substantial damage to property that would entail the risk of death or serious bodily injury to persons. These special administrative measures ordinarily may include housing the inmate in administrative detention and/or limiting certain privileges, including, but not limited to, correspondence, visiting, interviews with representatives of the news media, and use of the telephone, as is reasonably necessary to protect persons against the risk of acts of violence or terrorism. The authority of the Director under this paragraph may not be delegated below the level of Acting Director. (more…)

November 21, 2009

IS OSAMA BIN LADEN A TERRORIST OR AN UNPRIVILEGED BELLIGERENT?

Filed under: Anti-Terrorism Lawyer — Tags: , , , , — johntfloyd @ 3:54 pm

Politics as Usual: Republicans Desperately Seek Outrage to be Relevant

By:  Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently appeared before a U.S. Senate committee hearing to explain his decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his four co-conspirators, in federal civilian court rather than let them be tried before a military commission under the 2009 Military Commissions Act. There were a number of sharp, biting exchanges between Holder and Republican senators, all of whom have joined ranks in a calculated political agenda to oppose the Obama administration not only on this decision but any decision it makes on any front.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, vigorously questioned Holder about Osama bin Laden should he be captured. Would the self-proclaimed jihadist be considered a criminal terrorist or an ‘unprivileged belligerent” (previously known as “enemy combatants” under the 2006 Military Commissions Act)? As a criminal terrorist, bin Laden, of course, would enjoy the same constitutional protections as any criminal defendant, including right to remain silent, right to counsel, and right not to be tortured. Sen. Graham’s line of questioning indicated he would be shocked and appalled were the world’s most wanted terrorist be given such constitutional protections upon capture.

Sen. Graham has a short memory. It was a Republican-led Congress in 1996 that enacted (and was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton in April of that year) the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). This law was enacted primarily in response to the 1995 Oklahoma City and 1993 World Trade Center bombings. AEDPA was codified as 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2332b. This statute defines the term “Federal crime of terrorism” as an offense that “is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” ADEPA designated the following list of already prohibited crimes as acts of “terrorism”:

  • 18 U.S.C. § 32 – destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities
  • 13 U.S.C. § 37 – violence at international airports
  • 18 U.S.C. § 81 – arson within special maritime and territorial jurisdiction (more…)

September 26, 2009

NEVER EVER TALK TO POLICE WITHOUT A LAWYER

Filed under: Anti-Terrorism Lawyer — Tags: , , , , , — johntfloyd @ 4:45 pm

Recent Terrorism Related Arrests Illustrate Need to Consult Lawyer Before Interviewing with Law Enforcement

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

This legal maxim is rooted in the very soul of every criminal defense attorney. Even if an individual is innocent, no one should ever talk to the police once the police make it clear they are investigating a crime, or a potential crime, and they feel the individual has either some involvement or knowledge about the crime. This advice is especially true when it comes to the FBI whose agents are skilled in the art of interrogation and proficient at tricking a person into making a false statement.

This FBI strategy was recently highlighted in a suspected al-Qaeda terror plot involving Najibullah Zazi, a lawful permanent resident of the United States who hails from Afghanistan. News media reports, based on official accounts or leaked accounts by the FBI, have linked Zazi and at least three other Denver-area men, along with a number of suspected or unknown individuals in New York and other cities in the United States, with an alleged al-Qaeda plot to use hydrogen peroxide bombs carried in backpacks to attack New York City’s mass transit system or other mass transit systems in this country.

(The following fact pattern is taken from FBI affidavits, which are notoriously one-sided, and news reports and may be incorrect, misleading or wrong. These men are presumed innocent and the use of these facts in this article is for illustrative purposes only.)

Zazi and his father, Mohammed Zazi (a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan), and a New York City imam named Ahmad Wais Afzali (also a lawful permanent U.S. resident from Afghanistan) were arrested on September 19, 2009 by the FBI for allegedly making false statements to federal agents in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001(a)(2). The “false statement” charges indicated that the FBI, and Homeland Security agents, had not yet compiled enough evidence to bring terror-related conspiracy charges under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 or specific acts of “international terrorism” under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2331(1) against anyone they suspect were involved in the alleged New York City mass transit terror plot. The government has since indicted Najibullah Zazi on terrorism related charges. (more…)

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