Justice Interrupted: Clarity denied in Holy Land Foundation

The Dallas Morning News ^ | October 23, 2007 | The Dallas Morning News Editorial

[CHEE]

What a disappointment yesterday's mistrial in the Holy Land Foundation federal trial was. What the public wanted was clarity and closure in this long-running case, which Dallas first began to learn details of years ago in the groundbreaking reporting of this newspaper's Steve McGonigle. What the jury delivered after 19 days of deliberation – and an additional four-day delay in unsealing the verdicts – was confusion.

/snip photo from Associated Press

Defendants Shukri Abu Baker (center left) and Abdulrahman Odeh hug after a mistrial was declared yesterday in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Prosecutors say they'll retry the complicated case. So profound was the confusion that Judge Joe A. Fish seemed startled when he opened the sealed verdicts only to discover that the jury had left most counts blank. Even the jury seemed bizarrely unsure of what it had decided. Small wonder Judge Fish declared a mistrial.

[CHEE]

I know I am confused and dismayed over this outcome.

[HHFi]

There's an article in today's Dallas Morning News in which one juror talks about how sympathetic he is to the Palestinians and says he thinks the defendants sent the money to help them. Okay, maybe some of it ended up with Hamas, and maybe they support violence, but that doesn't convince him that they're terrorists. All of this begs the question:

WHAT WAS THAT IDIOT DOING ON A JURY?!!

I live in Dallas. I thought we exported jurors that stupid to Los Angeles.

[tobyhill]

The Government needs to remember the KISS theory, Keep It Simple Stupid. Just go with the charges that can stick without cluttering some idiot minds. Hamas Terrorist, Holy Land Foundation give money to Hamas Terrorist.

[3AngelaD]

Jury was apparently an entire light fixture worth of dim bulbs. What they were up to was so bad that even the Lib, always-tolerant DMN was apalled.

Whether or not a crime was committed, evidence from wiretaps and videotapes – for example, the Hamas fundraising skit in which defendant and former Dallas city engineer Mufid Abdulqader chanted, "Death to Jews is precious" – was morally damning for defendants who claimed to be humanitarians. More importantly, the government introduced evidence showing how the infrastructure of many major U.S. Muslim organizations ties together, and how they have their philosophical roots in the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

[pitinkie]

“Mr. Neal, who said he has lived in Europe, said that that he believes the Palestinians “are oppressed by the Israeli government.”

He also had difficulty calling Hamas a terrorist group. “Part of it does terrorist acts, but it’s a political movement. It’s an uprising.”

The evidence, he said, “showed Hamas is a violent group, but I didn’t see the defendants giving money to Hamas. They were giving money to the Palestinian people. Of course, it might get to Hamas somewhere down the line, but you can throw a rock and hit someone who belongs to Hamas there. I believe they were benefiting the Palestinians and others who needed charity.”

Idiots!

[vetsvette]

The average American jury member just isn’t smart enough to understand this complex financial arrangement. The only way that the Government wins this kind of a case is to break it down into small pieces and prosecute each piece separately. When they go for too much, they end up with nothing.