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Home Front: Politix
Federal Judge rails against Trump and blocks birthright executive order for second time
2025-02-07
[LawAndCrime] ‘Clearly unconstitutional’: Federal judge tears into Trump for trying to ‘navigate around’ the ‘rule of law’ and issues nationwide injunction against birthright citizenship ban
Judge Shopping™
In a Seattle courtroom late Thursday morning, Ronald Reagan-appointed U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued a nationwide injunction from the bench prohibiting the government from enforcing the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20.
A necessary step, because this needs to be elevated to the US Supreme Court as quickly as possible. No doubt a number of other Trump executive orders are intended to go through the same process of federal court injunction followed by the administration appealing for a Supreme Court ruling — some President Trump will win, some will need to be rewritten to address Supreme Court concerns, and some will need to go through Congress. And the sooner they know what needs more work, the better for the country.
The judge had sharp words for the effort to do away with the long-established constitutional right — an effort that has itself become sharply divisive.

“It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Coughenour intoned. “The rule of law, according to him, is something to navigate around or simply ignore.”
Look, I am a 2nd generation Mid-East Europe immigrant. My Grandparents came as Indentured servants (forced labor), via Ellis Island. I myself am married to a sweet Caribbean Indian. She is 1st generation herself.

But I still make the argument for the long held legal precedent that NO criminal can be, nor should be enriched by their illegal acts.

Illegals sneaking into the USA, with the sole goal of having a baby on US Soil, to milk the system for life, is the same thing.

ONLY those that have applied in a proper legal manner should be "Considered”.
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Home Front: WoT
Appeals court: Sentence terrorist Ressam again
2010-02-03
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered that Ahmed Ressam, a convicted terrorist arrested in December 1999 in Port Angeles with a car full of explosives, be sentenced again.

And this time, the court has ordered that U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who presided over Ressam's trial and his sentencing, not be involved.

In a 2-1 decision, the court's majority said Coughenour's sentence -- 43 years below the low range of the federal sentencing guidelines -- was "both procedurally and substantively unreasonable."

It concluded: "The district judge's previously expressed views appear too entrenched to allow for the appearance of fairness on remand. For these reasons, we direct that the case be reassigned to a different judge for resentencing."

In December 2008, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle appealed the 22-year sentence imposed Ressam. Ressam, an Algerian, had intended to set off the explosives at Los Angeles International Airport. The 9th Circuit had sent the case back to Coughenour for resentencing because of the judge's failure at Ressam's original sentencing in 2005 to clearly enumerate how he had calculated Ressam's sentence under federal guidelines. Coughenour rejected a request from prosecutors at a Dec. 3, 2008 hearing that Ressam be sentenced to life in prison, because he had stopped cooperating with investigators. Instead, he re-imposed the 22-year sentence.

The appeals court ruled Tuesday that Coughenour "committed procedural error in failing to address specific, nonfrivolous arguments raised by the government in imposing a sentence that is well below the advisory sentencing guidelines range." The court ruled that Coughenour failed to keep the sentencing guidelines -- Ressam had faced 65 years to life under them -- in mind. The judge had not detailed why he rejected prosecutors' arguments about Ressam's cooperation.

The majority said Coughenour not only failed "to give 'substantial weight' to the government's evaluation of the extent of the defendant's assistance, it failed to give it any weight. The district court credited only Ressam's assessment of the value of his own cooperation, offering no explanation as to why it was rejecting the government's assessment." The majority also faulted Coughenhour for failing to address prosecutors' arguments that a longer sentence was needed to protect the public.

Ressam, whom the appeals court said "has demonstrated strongly held beliefs about the need to attack American interests in the United States and abroad," would be 53 years old when released under the 22-year sentence.
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Home Front: WoT
Would-be LAX bomber is resentenced to 22 years
2008-12-05
Hat tip Patterico.
Reporting from Seattle -- Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber" convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, was resentenced to 22 years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge found that solitary confinement and repeated interrogations had helped cause him to stop cooperating in other terrorism prosecutions.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour rejected the government's warning that Ressam, who in 1999 was stopped coming off a ferry from Canada with a carload of explosives, had reverted to Al Qaeda sympathies and would represent a danger if he were ever released. Noting that the case comes "as our nation prepares for a new chapter," Coughenour said Ressam had provided "an unprecedented view of the inner workings [of Al Qaeda] that almost without question prevented . . . future attacks."

The substantial help that the Algerian provided to U.S. officials before his change of heart -- coupled with the relatively shorter sentences handed out in other terrorism cases -- merited no harsher a penalty than the 22-year sentence first imposed in 2005, the judge said.
That he stopped cooperating, after his original sentence was conditioned on cooperation, doesn't seem to have bothered the judge much.
That sentence effectively was vacated by a federal appeals court ruling on another issue in the case. So prosecutors were able to return to court Wednesday to argue that Coughenour's original sentence was too lenient, given Ressam's failure to live up to his cooperation agreement.

Government lawyers started out the day seeking a 45-year sentence. But as Ressam accused investigators of pressuring him through mental duress into providing unreliable information against Al Qaeda suspects, prosecutors upped the ante to demand life in prison.

Ressam, who was representing himself, did not object. "Sentence me to life in prison, or anything you wish," he told the judge. "I will have no objection to your sentence."

The Ressam case represents a stunning reversal for federal prosecutors who once had relied on the 41-year-old militant for help in a variety of high-level terrorism cases -- some of which were halted in their tracks when he stopped talking in 2003.

Ressam has recanted his testimony in at least three cases, one involving his alleged accomplice in the Los Angeles bombing plot, Mokhtar Haouari. The Montreal shopkeeper was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2001 for conspiring to provide material support by giving Ressam money and a fake Canadian driver's license.

On Wednesday, Ressam told the court he had been pressured into providing testimony in two other high-profile cases -- one involving Abu Doha, identified by U.S. authorities as one of Europe's highest-ranking Al Qaeda figures, and Samir Ait Mohamed, who allegedly helped Ressam in the Los Angeles bombing conspiracy.

"The government attorney and the investigator . . . interpret[ed] some of my statements to suit their interest, and statements . . . were put in my mouth. I said yes because of the extreme mental exhaustion I was going through," Ressam said Wednesday. "I retract all the statements I made in the past and do not want my word counted in the trial. . . . I did not know what I was saying."
Played everyone and got away with it.
Ressam's retreat forced the U.S. to abandon prosecution of Abu Doha and Mohamed, despite the fact that Britain and Canada had held the men in custody at American officials' request. British authorities shifted Abu Doha's detention to house in July.

"Our government was put in a horrible situation," said Mark Bartlett, first assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle. "We had gone to two of our closest allies, Great Britain and Canada, and said . . . arrest these people, keep them in custody, and we promise we will bring them to the United States. . . . We will hold them accountable. And then we have to go back and say we are unable to try them."

Ressam's assertions about the Haouari case in court Wednesday can now be used by the shopkeeper's lawyers to demand a new trial, Bartlett said. "Ressam has provided no indication that he has repudiated the goals of terrorists to inflict harm on the United States. His decision to end cooperation raises the specter that he continues to pose a real and serious threat to the United States," Bartlett wrote in his sentencing memorandum.

Jeffrey Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in Seattle, said after Wednesday's court session that he would seek permission to appeal Ressam's sentence. He argued that Ressam stopped cooperating not because of a mental breakdown, but because he was unhappy with the 22 years he originally had received.

"He told the court today in front of the judge, 'I'm a terrorist, I'm trained as a terrorist, I'm going to do it again when I get out. . . . That's what I heard him say," Sullivan said. "He deserves to stay in jail until he dies."

Tom Hillier, the federal public defender who represented Ressam at trial, said his client received much harsher treatment once he was transferred to New York to help with higher-profile terrorism cases. "There were factors -- in the sense of lengthy, repetitive, demanding, unrelenting interrogations of somebody who's helping, you know? And without a lot of concern for his frame of mind during all of that," Hillier said.
So his complaint is that the interrogators weren't as loving as they should have been ...
"I think a part of the reason for that is that the interrogators came from different organizations, different countries, and so he didn't have a government handler, somebody who was sort of taking care of him, as somebody should have been," Hillier said. "In fact, the folks in New York were somewhat distant from Ahmed, somewhat uncaring, which is not to be unexpected, given that they had recently suffered the trauma of 9/11."
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Home Front: WoT
Man convicted in U.S. millennium terror plot writes to judge, upsets lawyers
2006-12-07
SEATTLE (AP) - An Algerian convicted of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport at the turn of the millennium has written a letter to the judge who sentenced him to 22 years in prison and his lawyers fear it could hurt his chances of winning an appeal.

Few details were provided in court filings this week about the letter, written in Arabic by Ahmed Ressam. The filings indicate U.S. District Judge John Coughenour had it translated and placed it under seal but the judge's office refused to say Wednesday whether he had read it. Its content was not disclosed.

Ressam's lawyers have asked Coughenour not to read it, for fear of tainting the case.
Let him rassle the bear. If he wins, he gets to swap places with these rascal lawyers.
- Judge Bean
Ressam and federal prosecutors have appealed aspects of his 2005 sentence to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has indicated it may send the case back to Coughenour. Prosecutors said 22 years was too lenient a punishment.

Ressam was convicted in 2001 of terrorism and explosives charges for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Customs agents in Port Angeles, Wash., caught him with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999, a scare that prompted cancellation of millennium celebrations at Seattle's Space Needle.

One of Ressam's lawyers, Thomas Hillier, declined to say Wednesday how he learned of the letter. "Mr. Ressam is not a citizen of this country, does not speak our language and has suffered difficult confinement for a substantial period of time," Hillier wrote in court documents. "His letter may have been sent without fully appreciating the inappropriateness of contacting the court ex parte. The government has no right to take advantage of Mr. Ressam without the shield of counsel."

Ressam started co-operating with authorities after his conviction, which helped win him a lesser sentence. But he eventually stopped co-operating, infuriating prosecutors who then had to drop charges against two suspected co-conspirators.

Federal prosecutors argued in documents filed Tuesday that the judge should be allowed to read the letter because it might say Ressam wants new lawyers or wishes to resume co-operating. "It is for Mr. Ressam to determine whether he wishes to file a matter with the court or whether he wishes to withdraw it, not counsel on his behalf," prosecutors wrote.
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Home Front: WoT
Algerian Terrorist Narks 100 Comrades Over Two Years' Interrogation
2005-04-14
Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium, gave investigators detailed information on more than 100 potential terrorists in interviews that stretched over two years, according to court documents filed in anticipation of his sentencing this month. "Among the individuals he discussed were people whose names meant nothing to us when first heard, but were later identified as significant players in al-Qaida and other terrorist networks," Ressam's lawyers wrote in outlining his cooperation.

Ressam was caught smuggling a trunkload of bomb-making materials into the United States through Port Angeles in December 1999. He was convicted in April 2001 of nine charges, including terrorist conspiracy. Facing as much as 130 years in prison, he cut a deal with the Justice Department and began cooperating with authorities in exchange for a 27-year prison sentence. From May 10, 2001, to April 27, 2003, Ressam spent more than 200 hours speaking with authorities about terrorist networks and people with potential connections to them. He also spent 65 hours testifying during depositions or trials, his lawyers wrote.

Among the topics Ressam covered were training camps in Afghanistan, terrorist recruitment, training, cell locations, general targets, the ideology of the movements, weapons and technology, explosives making, chemicals used in constructing explosives and the use of safe houses. Much of the information Ressam provided remains secret. The documents filed publicly in U.S. District Court in Seattle this week offer merely an outline of his cooperation; a more detailed summary, along with the report of a Boston psychiatrist who specializes in the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, was filed under seal. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday wrote that they planned to review the detailed summary and decide by April 25 what sections, if any, should be made public. Ressam's sentencing is scheduled for April 27.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who will impose sentence, has described Ressam's assistance as "startlingly helpful." Ressam's testimony helped convict Mokhtar Haouari of supplying fake identification and cash for the millennium bomb plot. Haouari was sentenced in New York to 24 years in prison. He also provided information about Haydar Abu Doha, an Algerian national who is in British custody awaiting extradition to the United States, where he is charged with orchestrating the plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. In December 2002, Ressam met with German justice officials who questioned him about al-Qaida for the trial of a Moroccan charged with supporting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackers. The Moroccan, Mounir el Motassadeq, was convicted in February 2003 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Ressam also spoke with terrorism investigators from Canada, Italy, Spain and Great Britain, his lawyers wrote.
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