Word: brinkema
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...Because justice and sympathy are different issues. Moussaoui's courtroom antics and declarations were outrageous but the prosecution of his trial was a farce nonetheless. Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema repeatedly criticized certain aspects of the prosecutors' efforts to win a guilty verdict as both underhanded and illegal. At one point in the trial, Brinkema rebuked prosecutors for illegally coaching a witness from a federal agency. She called that tampering "an egregious" and a "significant error by the government affecting the... integrity of the criminal justice system of the United States...
...occasion Brinkema backed Moussaoui's call to cite testimony from Guantanamo prisoners and 9/11 masterminds Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh for his defense. Prosecutors resisted that demand, claiming the information was classified. (Moussaoui would win the right to use parts of statements by the 9/11 puppet masters, who described the Frenchman as too erratic and unreliable to be let in on the plot...
...Brinkema's focus is the plea deal al-Arian signed in 2006 to avoid a retrial on the deadlocked terrorism charges. Under its terms, al-Arian, 51, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who since 1986 had been an instructor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and was, after taking time already served into account, to be deported nearly immediately. But a federal prosecutor in Virginia evidently had no intention of allowing al-Arian to leave the country. Unbeknownst to defense lawyers at the time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg was preparing...
...Kromberg has not commented publicly on the affidavit, and his office told TIME that neither he nor anyone else there would have anything to say on the matter; prosecutors have not yet said whether they'll press ahead now on the criminal-contempt charges against al-Arian. Last week Brinkema gave the defense the go-ahead to file a motion to dismiss those charges. "I think there are significant questions about what actually happened," she said. "The Justice Department is not a fishmonger...
...Brinkema presided over the 2006 trial and conviction of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. When the jury in that case sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison instead of death, Brinkema told him he would "die with a whimper" behind bars. U.S. prosecutors could have sent Sami al-Arian out of the country in disgrace three years ago. Instead, they seem to have turned a man who has rooted for suicide bombers into a man many justice advocates are rooting...