Full Description
The U.S. government's power to categorize individuals as terrorist suspects and therefore ineligible for certain long-standing constitutional protections has expanded exponentially since 9/11, all the while remaining resistant to oversight. Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions provides a comprehensive and uniquely up-to-date dissection of the government's advantages over suspects in criminal prosecutions of terrorism, which are driven by a preventive mindset that purports to stop plots before they can come to fruition. It establishes the background for these controversial policies and practices and then demonstrates how they have impeded the normal goals of criminal prosecution, even in light of a competing military tribunal model. Proceeding in a linear manner from the investigatory stage of a prosecution on through to sentencing, the book documents the emergence of a "terrorist exceptionalism" to normal rules of criminal law and procedure and questions whether the government has overstated the threat posed by the individuals it charges with these crimes. Included is a discussion of the large-scale spying and use of informants rooted in the questionable "radicalization" theory; the material support statute--the government's chief legal tool in bringing criminal prosecutions; the new rules regarding generation of evidence and the broad construction of that evidence as relevant at trial; and a look at the special sentencing and confinement regimes for those convicted of terrorist crimes. In this critical examination of terrorism prosecutions in federal court, Professor Said reveals a phenomenon at odds with basic constitutional protections for criminal defendants.
This paperback contains a new Preface that discusses some important developments since the initial hardback publication in 2015.
Contents
Preface to the Paperback
Preface to the Hardback
Introduction
1. Informants, Spies, Radicalization, and Entrapment
The Essential Question: Who Is a Terrorist?
Radicalization: The Theory
Radicalization: The NYPD Experience in Practice
The FBI Experience: Informants and the Death of the Entrapment Defense
Examples of Informant-Driven Prosecutions
Conclusion-What Spying and Informants Have Wrought
2. The Continual Evolution of the Material Support Ban
The Statute-18 U.S.C. § 2339B
The Designation Process
Constitutional Challenges to § 2339B
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project
Material Support Providing Legitimacy-the Holy Land Foundation Prosecution
Continual Expansion-United States v. Mehanna
Further Permutations of Material Support
3. Evidence and the Criminal Terrorist Prosecution
FISA
Interrogation
The Voluntariness Test in Practice: The Case of Ahmed Abu Ali
The Federal Rules of Evidence-Relevance and Its Discontents
The Expert Witness
4. The Implications and Broad Horizons of the Terrorism Prosecution
The Saga of Jose Padilla
The Ghailani Prosecution: The Courts Rescue the Government from a Crisis It Created
Other Uses of the Criminal Terrorist Prosecution-Improbabilities and Political Exceptionalism
Defining and Prosecuting Terrorism: The Government's Exclusive Domain
5. The Final Stop: Sentencing and Confinement
The Terrorism Enhancement-U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4
United States v. Abu Ali
United States v. Lynne Stewart
The Jose Padilla Prosecution
Postscript: Confinement-Even When Imprisoned, the Terrorist Prisoner Is Exceptional
Conclusion
Notes
Index
