United States Fourth Circuit

In a prosecution resulting from defendant's affiliation with an al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Saudi Arabia, and its plans to carry out a number of terrorist acts in the U.S., his conviction and sentence are affirmed in part over claims of error regarding: 1) the admission of statements made to Saudi authorities where he was never given a probable cause determination or Miranda warnings; 2) the sufficiency of the evidence to support his confessions; 3) whether the taking of depositions of Saudi officials in Riyadh violated defendant's Confrontation Clause rights; 4) prosecutorial misconduct; 5) whether Special Administrative Measures imposed on him constituted an improper additional sentence; 6) the sufficiency of the evidence supporting various convictions; 7) a determination that redacted classified information need not be disclosed to defendant, his uncleared counsel, and the public; 8) the exclusion of defendant and his uncleared counsel from certain proceedings; 9) a grant of the government's request that a complete, unrelated classified document could be presented to the jury via the "silent witness" procedure and withheld from the defendant; and 10) a denial of a post-trial motion to compel the government to disclose whether the Terrorist Surveillance Program of the National Security Agency resulted in interceptions related to the investigation and prosecution of the case. However, the case is reversed and remanded in part where: 1) the court erred when it significantly relied on the need to avoid an unwarranted sentence disparity between defendant and John Walker Lindh; 2) the court erred in application of section 3553(a)(6) when it relied on a comparison to the case of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols; and 3) a significant downward deviation was not justified.

Appellate Information

• Decided 06/06/2008
• Published 06/06/2008

Judges

• Before WILKINSON, MOTZ, and TRAXLER, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Fourth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• ARGUED:  Joshua Lewis Dratel, New York, New York, for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, Appellant/Cross-Appellee.  David Howard Laufman, Assistant United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for the United States, Appellee/Cross-Appellant.   ON BRIEF:  Joseph Margulies, University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, Illinois, for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, Appellant/Cross-Appellee.  Chuck Rosenberg, United States Attorney, Stephen M. Campbell, Assistant United States Attorney, Marla B. Tusk, Trial Attorney, Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for the United States, Appellee/Cross-Appellant.