A former federal judge who was arrested last month on federal gun and drug charges has pleaded guilty to possession of controlled substances and conversion of government property, Justice Department said Friday.
Jack T. Camp, the former chief judge of the Northern District of Georgia, allegedly sought to buy drugs for a stripper who was an FBI informant. He pleaded guilty to two counts of possession and one count of conversion of government property. His sentencing is scheduled for March 2011.
Deborah Sue Mayer and Tracee Joy Plowell from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section prosecuted the case for the government. Mayer, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, has also worked on the probe of Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign. Plowell previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee and in the Executive Office of United States Attorneys.
Drowned out in the debate over the lopsided jury verdict convicting Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani of only one count of conspiracy in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa is a potential game-changer: a federal judge can, and likely will, sentence the former Guantanamo detainee to life behind bars.
On Wednesday, a Manhattan jury found Ghailani guilty on one count and acquitted him of the 284 other crimes he was charged with, including being part of a worldwide terrorism plot with Osama bin Laden.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will sentence Ghailani on Jan. 25, and has the power to give him the same mandatory life sentence he would have received if the six-man, six-woman jury had found him guilty of any of the 224 murder charges of which he was accused.
Anthony Barkow (photo courtesy Juliana Thomas)
“People may be surprised you can be sentenced for things you’re acquitted of,” said former Southern District of New York prosecutor Anthony Barkow, executive director at Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University Law School.
The U.S. Code of Criminal Procedure places “no limitation” on what information a federal judge can consider at sentencing. Some judges have interpreted this to mean they can enhance sentences for conduct of which a defendant was acquitted.
“Everyone now is talking about the significance of the verdict, but if Ghailani gets life in prison, that’s a very different debate than where we are at this point in time,” Barkow said.
Should Ghailani receive a life sentence, the government’s verdict likely will seem less hollow, he said. Ghailani would have received a fair trial, and critics of civilian trials can no longer complain that the judge’s exclusion of a cooperator’s coersion-linked testimony negatively impacted the government’s case.
More than that, a life sentence for Ghailani would in turn pave the way for the Justice Department’s plan to bring other Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. for civilian court trials, said Barkow and another former prosecutor who handled complex terrorism trials. At least one case already is in pretrial motion: the Nigerian man charged in last year’s Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt.
Ghailani was charged in the bombings of embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 224 people, including 12 U.S. citizens, on Aug. 7, 1998. The Tanzania attack killed 11 people and more than 4,500 people were injured in both blasts. Had he been convicted of any of the murder counts, Ghailani faced a mandatory life sentence. His conspiracy conviction will get him at least a minimum of 20 years in prison.
Before the start of Ghailani’s five-week trial, the government faced a major setback when Kaplan barred prosecutors from using a key witness because his identity was discovered when Ghailani underwent coersive interrogation techniques, what his defense lawyers have called torture. Early this week, a juror asked to be excused, saying she couldn’t agree with the other jurors. Kaplan denied her request and a defense request for a mistrial.
Prosecutors had their share of hurdles to surmount in “getting this case over the finish line — ranging from evidentiary and other legal issues to political issues,” said former SDNY prosecutor Christopher Morvillo, now of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, P.C. in New York.
As he sees it, the verdict is a clear victory for the government. “The bottom line for me is that Ghailani is likely going to jail for a long, long time and that has to be viewed, under all of these circumstances, as a law enforcement victory and a clear sign, warts and all, that the system worked,” he said.
Christopher Morvillo (Morvillo Abramowitz)
Neither Barkow nor Morvillo believe the outcome would be any better if the case had been heard in a military tribunal. Military judges typically are far less experienced with terrorism trials than SDNY judges and are not equipped to offer the full range of protections to defendants that civilian courts offer, according to Morvillo. For example, civilian courts require witnesses to provide live testimony to allow defendants a chance to cross-exam evidence. In military courts, witnesses are sometimes allowed to submit written statements.
Both civilian and military forums share all of the same evidentiary issues and proof problems, Morvillo said. But proponents of the tribunals, he said, are advocating for a system that affords defendants “less protection than any other person whose liberty is at stake.”
“Remember, the events occurred 12 years ago and several witnesses have since died,” he said. ”Likewise, in the hands of prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers with little or no experience with terrorism trials, I have serious questions as to whether the result would have been much different.”
Kaplan himself said he believed a military judge would have also excluded the cooperator’s challenged testimony. Critics of military commissions say the system typically produces shorter sentences than federal courts, in part because prosecutors want to avoid appeals.
Although Kaplan’s ruling on the witness’s testimony may have hurt the government’s case against Ghailani — Assistant U.S. attorney Michael Farbiarz called the cooperator, Tanzanian miner Hussein Abebe, a “giant” and “critical” witness — it wouldn’t be the first time expedient wartime measures have hindered DOJ prosecutions.
In December 2009, a federal judge in Washington D.C. threw out the government’s case against several Blackwater security guards accused of a 2007 shooting in Iraq that left more than 30 people injured or dead. The guards had already given testimony to the State Department under rules requiring them to give complete accounts or lose their jobs. The coercive factor meant prosecutors couldn’t use those statements, the judge ruled, severely limiting the government’s case.
In the Ghailani case, Abebe would have testified that he sold five tons of TNT to the defendant, which prosecutors wanted to use to show his intent to kill. Without that testimony, prosecutors had to rely on circumstantial evidence.
“If anyone is unsatisfied with Ghailani’s acquittal on 284 counts, they should blame the CIA agents who tortured him,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement.
SDNY U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara left no room for doubt that prosecutors will seek a life sentence for Ghailani. “Ahmed Ghailani will face, and we will seek, the maximum sentence of life without parole when he is sentenced in January,” he said. “I want to express my deep appreciation for the unflagging commitment, dedication and talent of the agents who so thoroughly investigated this case and the prosecutors who so ably tried it.”
Before dismissing the jurors Wednesday, Kaplan praised their efforts over the five-week trial that began Oct.12. He said they proved “that American justice can be delivered calmly, deliberately and fairly, by ordinary people — people who are not beholden to any government, including this one.”
Defense lawyer Peter Quijano told reporters after the verdict that his client’s 284 acquittals were a “reaffirmation that this nation’s judicial system is the greatest ever devised.”
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Friday endorsed a disparaging report on the Justice Department’s management of a divisive voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.
The body voted 5-2 along ideological lines to approve the conservative-backed document, three weeks after a Democratic commissioner walked out of a previous meeting, preventing consideration of the report. Republican Vice Chairman Abigail Thernstrom, who has voiced concerns about the commission’s investigation, was not present.
Democratic Commissioner Michael Yaki, who walked out of the last meeting, said the commission’s investigation “is not legitimate” and “an irresponsible exercise.” He said the report is “blown out of proportion.”
“It really reads like a bad script for a ‘Men in Black’ sequel,” Yaki said. “It has conspiracy theories, whispers of left-wing cabals, sinister forces at work tampering with witnesses, innuendo and rumor.”
U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow (photo by Andrew Ramonas / Main Justice)
Republican Commissioner Peter Kirsanow conceded that the New Black Panther case alone “may not be the most important thing in the world.” But he said the commission’s probe was important. He noted that former DOJ staffer J. Christian Adams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division Voting Section, testified before the commission that DOJ officials were opposed to opening voting rights cases against minorities.
“What drew the attention of this particular commission was [the New Black Panther case] appeared to be, and is now confirmed by these two witnesses to be, a manifestation of a policy and practice engaged in by the Department of Justice,” Kirsanow said.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said in a statement before the commission that the Civil Rights Division is “strongly committed” to enforcing voting rights laws, pushing back against commissioners’ criticism of DOJ decisions in the case.
An earlier draft of the commission’s report says the DOJ did not fully cooperate with the probe, which focused on the government’s decision to throw out most charges against members of the anti-white fringe group who wore military clothing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood in November 2008. The version of the report approved by the commission also is critical of DOJ cooperation’s with the investigation, according to Republican and independent commissioners. The document will not become public for a few days.
The DOJ has voiced opposition to the earlier report’s allegations about the department’s responsiveness. DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said last month that the department has handed over more than 4,000 documents about the case at the request of the commission.
The commission has spent more than $170,000 probing the DOJ’s handling of the New Black Panther Party case. Congressional Republicans have commended the panel’s investigation, and some conservative commissioners have supported continuing the probe.
In late October, the panel subpoenaed key DOJ officials who were involved with the case. But the DOJ would not permit testimony from former acting Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Loretta King, or division officials Julie Fernandes and Steve Rosenbaum, citing the commission’s conditions for the depositions. The DOJ also declined to comply with a subpoena for testimony from Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch, who has ties to the case.
This story has been updated.
A senior official in the Justice Department Antitrust Division touted U.S. efforts to combat price fixing around the globe at an American Bar Association forum Thursday, noting increased cooperation between the United States and various nations.
Ann O’Brien, a Senior Counsel in the Antitrust Division, praised the assistance of long-term U.S. partners in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and fresh help from other governments. She said a “new era” in antitrust cartel enforcement collaboration has begun to emerge in South America and Africa.
“Cooperation is burgeoning with enforcers on continents such as South America and in Africa,” said O’Brien, who was not speaking on behalf of the DOJ at the ABA Section of Antitrust Law’s Fall Forum. “So, we continue to have a pick-up-the-phone cooperative relationship with our fellow enforcers around the globe. “
O’Brien said fines DOJ received from antitrust cases were down to $555 million in fiscal 2010, from $1 billion in fiscal 2009, the most secured by the Antitrust Division in the last 10 years. But the number of days violators of antitrust laws spent behind bars increased to 26,046 in fiscal 2010, up from 25,936 in fiscal 2009. (See more statistics here.)
“The division believes that obviously fines are important,” O’Brien said. “But the most effective way to deter cartel activity is to prosecute individuals and seek prison sentence for those individuals.”
Federal agents indicted two close associates of famed Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff Thursday morning, the bureau said in a news release.
Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi are suspected of having played a key role in the Madoff Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2008. They are charged with conspiracy, securities fraud, tax evasion and other crimes.
“As everyone knows, Bernard Madoff perpetrated the largest financial fraud in history, but as we allege again today, others criminally assisted his epic crime. A house of cards is almost never built by one lone architect”, Southern District of New York U.S Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. “Year after year, Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi protected and perpetuated the Madoff mirage, while putting very real money in their own pockets.”
According to the indictment unsealed Thursday, the two women knowingly and actively participated in the fraud, which cost investors more than $20 billion in losses.
Bongiorno, who was responsible for recruitment at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, and Crupi, a partner in the firm for more than 25 years, are suspected of falsifying account statements for investors and cashing out Madoff’s clients as the fraud collapsed.
If convicted, Bongiorno and Crupi face up to 75 and 65 years in prison, respectively.
Conservatives are attacking a recent Department of Justice Inspector General audit of U.S. Attorney travel expenses, calling it politically motivated.
The right-leaning Daily Caller political website interviewed former Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, who said the report is inaccurate and demanded an apology from the Justice Department. The website also identified the previously anonymous author of the report, Maura Lee, and quoted a controversial former George W. Bush administration Civil Rights Division official denigrating her work. (Inspector General’s reports do not list individual authors and instead are issued under the auspices of the IG’s office.)
Former Justice Department official Hans Von Spakovsky, whose work in the Civil Rights Division during the Bush administration also came under critical review by the Inspector General’s office and some career prosecutors, called Lee “one of the most belligerent, unprofessional lawyers” he had ever met.
“She was one of the most partisan career people I ever met,” von Spakovsky told the website.
The report in question described five unnamed Bush administration U.S. Attorneys who “routinely exceeded the government rate [for lodging], by large amounts, with insufficient, inaccurate, or no justification.” Several of those U.S. Attorneys subsequently were identified in the media, including rising GOP political star Chris Christie, now the governor of New Jersey.
Buchanan, who served as U.S. Attorney in Western Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2009, was “U.S. Attorney B” in the report. According to the report, she paid more than the government rate 11 times at upscale hotels in D.C., overspending about $4,200.
Buchanan did not dispute the figure, but told the website the report contained several inaccuracies. Buchanan said she did not blame her assistant for not getting the government rate at hotels, and that she fully cooperated with the inquiries from the Inspector General’s office. She also took issue with the report for not noting that she also served as acting director for the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women, which necessitated frequent trips to Washington.
“Any instance in which the investigator could characterize something in a negative light, she did,” Buchanan said. “There was no attempt to write a factual report … it’s something I’ve never seen in my 22 years with the Justice Department.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder honored the Justice Department’s 19,000 military veterans on Thursday during the first Veterans Appreciation Day.
“Veterans are leaders. Veterans are patriots. Veterans are heroes. They are among our nation’s most effective and dedicated public servants,” Holder said in the Justice Department’s Great Hall. “And today’s Justice Department relies on the unique experience, expertise, and perspective that our veterans provide.”
Holder mentioned the Veterans Employment Initiative, launched by President Barack Obama last year and aimed at helping U.S military veterans to find jobs. The Veterans Employment Office, created in February, targets veterans who want to pursue careers in the DOJ.
The Attorney General also awarded Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) a special prize for his military record. A former member of the U.S. Air Force and a former active duty military lawyer, Graham has been an active advocate for U.S. soldiers and veterans since his election to Congress more than 15 years ago. He is a colonel in the Air Force Reserves.
In introducing Graham, the Attorney General called him “a valued partner in our daily efforts to advance the cause of justice.”
In his speech, Graham praised the rule of law, “the strongest weapon we have against our enemies.”
The pleasantries between Holder and Graham on Thursday were in sharp contrast to the tension between the two a year ago this month. Last year at a Senate hearing, Graham criticized Holder for his decision to have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks, tried by a federal court instead of a military commission. The debate over where to try Mohammed continues, and is part of a wider debate over the tension between national security and individual rights.
The senator said a year ago, as reported on Main Justice, that he believed suspected terrorists had rights, but not the same rights as American citizens accused of crimes. “I don’t believe Khalid Sheik Muhammad robbed a liquor store,” Graham said shortly after Holder’s decision. “He’s the mastermind in Sept. 11. We’ve have used military commissions before. I’m a military lawyer. I have a lot of faith in the military legal system.”
United States Attorney Preet Bharara
Southern District of New York
______________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2010
WWW.JUSTICE.GOV/USAO/NYS/
AHMED KHALFAN GHAILANI FOUND GUILTY IN MANHATTAN FEDERAL COURT OF CONSPIRING IN THE 1998 DESTRUCTION OF UNITED STATES EMBASSIES IN EAST AFRICA RESULTING IN DEATH
Al Qaeda Terrorist and First Guantanamo Detainee To Be Tried In Civilian Court Faces Possible Life Sentence In January
NEW YORK –U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara announced that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was found guilty today for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that took the lives of 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani, 36, a Tanzanian national, and the first detainee held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba to be tried in a civilian court, was found guilty of conspiring to destroy property and buildings of the United States, following a five week trial before U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Ghailani faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life on this count. Ghailani was acquitted of the remaining counts against him.
“Ahmed Ghailani was today convicted of conspiring in the 1998 destruction of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, causing death as a result,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “He will face, and we will seek, the maximum sentence of life without parole when he is sentenced in January. I want to express my deep appreciation for the unflagging commitment, dedication and talent of the agents who so thoroughly investigated this case and the prosecutors who so ably tried it.”
According to the evidence presented at trial, previous court proceedings in this case, and documents filed in Manhattan federal court:
Ghailani was first indicted on Dec.16, 1998, by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York. In that indictment and subsequent superseding indictments, Ghailani was charged with conspiring with Usama Bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda to kill American nationals and with several related crimes in connection with the twin bombings of Aug. 7, 1998, that destroyed the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Ghailani was also charged with 224 individual murder counts for each of the victims of the two embassy bombings.
The evidence at trial showed, among other things, that each of the embassies was attacked by suicide bombers driving large truck bombs packed with approximately 1,000 pounds of TNT. Ghailani purchased the truck as well as tanks of oxygen and acetylene gas that were used in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. He also stored explosive detonators that were used in the bomb at his residence.
The evidence also showed that the day before the bombings, using a fake passport in an assumed name, Ghailani flew from Nairobi, Kenya, to Pakistan in a coordinated escape from Africa. Two other Al Qaeda operatives, a senior operations leader and an explosives expert who had traveled between Kenya and Tanzania in the weeks before the bombings departed Africa for Pakistan on the same flight as Ghailani. Those operatives were also involved with the bombings.
* * *
Ghailani is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 25, 2011, at 11:00 AM EST.
Mr. Bharara praised the FBI and the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for their extraordinary work in the investigation of this case. He also thanked the Tanzanian Police for their assistance in the case.
This case is being handled by the Office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit with assistance from the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Farbiarz, Harry A. Chernoff, Nicholas Lewin and Sean S. Buckley are in charge of the prosecution.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved three U.S. Attorney nominees by voice vote at its meeting Thursday.
They are:
Charles M. Oberly III (Drinker Biddle)
-- Charles Oberly (Delaware): The of counsel to Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP was nominated on Sept. 16 to succeed Colm Connolly, who resigned as U.S. Attorney in 2007. Read more about Oberly here.
Ripley Rand (Gov)
– Ripley Rand (Middle District of North Carolina): The North Carolina Superior Court judge was tapped on July 28 to succeed Anna Mills S. Wagoner, who stepped down as U.S. Attorney in August. Read more about him here and here.
Conner Eldridge (Summit Bank)
– William Conner Eldridge Jr. (Western District of Arkansas): The special deputy prosecutor for the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office of Clark County, Ark., and former chief executive officer for Summit Bank in Arkansas was nominated on Sept. 29 to succeed Robert Balfe, who resigned as U.S. Attorney in January 2009. Read more about Eldridge here.
The committee has now endorsed 75 of Barack Obama’s U.S. Attorney nominees, 72 of whom have won Senate confirmation. The panel has yet to consider another two would-be U.S. Attorneys. There are 93 U.S. Attorney posts.
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