UPDATE: Guilty on all counts. Sentencing in September. The Padilla jury began deliberations yesterday – and they are already back with a verdict which has just been read. The speed of this decision is stunning – and hopefully a sign that the jury saw through this Kafkaesque case. Over the three months of the trial, we’ve all been following the case thanks to Lew Koch’s coverage – and you can review the background

In Chicago, we don’t have many stars. Al Capone was a star criminal. Almost single handedly, with a baseball bat and machine gun, he created the nation’s first permanent criminal enterprise which almost eighty years later runs smoothly. Mayor Richard J. Daley (the older guy) was a star politician, creating, maintaining and even strengthening the nation’s smoothest running political machine, so powerful that it could hand John F.

Patriotism worth its name grants the highest priority to the nation, not the Chief Executive, and knows the difference between the two. Louis Fisher and I have two interests in common: Jose Padilla and tennis. Fisher happens to be one of the nation’s foremost authorities on arbitrary imprisonment and stretching presidential power and is a senior scholar in the Law Library at the Library of Congress and author of more than a dozen

Sadly, it's anti-climactic. The defense rested its case yesterday. The case against the three conspirators is basically at an end, save for rebuttal witnesses and closing arguments. The government has alleged and theorized about its vague and shadowy conspiracy charges involving terrorists somewhere on the planet and the defense has insisted proof being proven and contending no such documentation exists.

Anthony Natale, Padilla’s attorney these past tumultuous five years, cooly informed US Federal Court Judge Marcia Cooke this week that he would not be calling no witnesses on his client’s behalf. None. It was a not-very-subtle way of signaling that the paucity of the government’s case against Padilla isn’t even worthy of a rejoinder, that he wouldn’t even dignify the credibility of the charges against his client and their unconvincing witnesses by

Federal prosecutors have based all of their evidence against Jose Padilla on one document with his signature and his fingerprints. Message to each juror being, “We are from the Justice Department – would we lie to you?” In the 10 weeks that this conspiracy trial has taken place, where Padilla, Hassoun and Kifah are charged with conspiracy to murder, kidnap or maim people outside the United States, there have been some

Basically these are the charges against Adham Amin Hassoun, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, and Jose Padilla: that they conspired to commit acts of murder, kidnapping, and maiming outside the United States, that they committed one or more overt acts in the United States in furtherance of those acts, providing material support and resources, and concealing and disguising the nature of those actions to be used in preparation for a conspiracy to murder, kidnap

There is something terribly wrong with the federal judicial system when a United States District Court Judge appointed by President George W. Bush can joke about a defense attorney’s request for directed verdict of not guilty in a case where the defendant before her might possibly spend the rest of his life in jail. There also may be something terribly right with the federal judicial system when a United States

The government has concluded its case against Jose Padilla and yesterday, to no one’s surprise U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke refused a defense request for directed verdict of not guilty. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier claimed “I think it is a very tightly knit conspiracy.” Indeed there has been a tightly knit conspiracy but not the one Frazier is trying to portray. The conspiracy – and one doesn’t need 300,000

Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea.....LETS GO TO PRESS! FLASH! BULLETIN! THIS JUST HANDED ME! The prosecution has concluded its case against Jose Padilla, and two others charged with conspiracy to help support violent Islamic extremist groups worldwide. The total hard evidence against Jose Padilla consists of an alleged Al Qaeda training camp application form document Padilla allegedly signed in July 2000.