Posted on 04/07/2007 6:38:36 AM PDT by Valin
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Shaky testimony and prejudice by the jury foreman should be enough to grant a new trial to a Lodi man convicted last year of terrorism-related charges, a defense lawyer argued Friday. Attorney Dennis Riordan told a federal judge that jury foreman Joseph Cote was biased against his client because he is Pakistani-American, a Muslim and was charged with terrorist activities. "We really have a question if we had 12 fair jurors," Riordan said during a hearing in U.S. District Court. "We know that one of them was not fair." Hamid Hayat's sentencing has been postponed while Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. considers a defense motion seeking a new trial. The judge delayed making a decision.
Hayat, 24, was arrested in June 2005 and convicted last April of lying to federal agents when he denied attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2003. He also was convicted of providing support to terrorists by attending the camp, then returning to the U.S. intending to conduct a holy war. He faces up to 39 years in prison. Under questioning by the judge, Cote denied allegations contained in a sworn statement by another juror that he made a gesture similar to tightening a noose or uttered "hang him" while jurors were considering evidence. "No, your honor, never," Cote told the judge.
He also defended statements he made after the trial to Atlantic Monthly. Cote told the magazine that "new rules of engagement" were justified after the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2005 London subway bombings.
Defense lawyers seized on those statements as evidence that Cote was predisposed to convict anyone accused of terrorism. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Tice-Raskin acknowledged the foreman acted improperly when he telephoned an alternate juror during deliberations. But he said none of Cote's actions were damaging enough to merit a new trial. "Did Hamid Hayat receive a fair trial?" Tice-Raskin said during the hearing. "The answer is yes -- absolutely yes"
We GET to be prejudiced — against Pakis, against Muslims, against any barbarians within our borders.
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