#4 - I Was On The Jury
Bad Criminal Defense Sent This Kid To Prison For 16 Years
In August 2015 I was invited to Jury Duty in NY Federal Court Lower Manhattan. During the selection process, when asked what newspapers I read, I answered “I read everything”. I suspect that having a Jewish last name and being from NYC the defense attorney guessed I was liberal left anti-police leaning. The prosecution probably guessed I was neutral. Just conjecture as I never asked why they selected me. During my career, I had spent several years working with LE (Law Enforcement) delivering technology solutions to police departments. During that experience, I hung out with lots of LEO’s at all levels at many different agencies. I respect the job that these men and women perform. From that experience I also learned that police lie under oath all the time, usually to get a conviction when they know the defendant is guilty, sometimes for other nefarious reasons. I was surprised when I was selected to serve, I was never asked about my previous experience with LEO’s.
After the four-day trial and a couple of hours of deliberation all twelve of us on the Jury voted to convict. Eleven of us took about 10 minutes to vote to convict and we spent the next four hours convincing the lone holdout. Guilty on all counts. We had no reasonable doubt that this defendant was guilty as charged. He admitted it. A stupid 19-year-old kid gets to spend the next 16 years in federal prison.
The US Department of Justice press release after the sentencing can be found at this link:
Here is the testimony that removed the reasonable doubt and made us vote to convict “The agents further observed that LE’s computer was open to the online account that he had used to communicate with the OCE and to LE’s personal email account.” The defendant did not dispute the accuracy of this testimony.
This defendant attempted to buy ricin from a known drug dealer on the dark web. A big-time felony. Except the drug dealer had been arrested a few weeks earlier and his online dark web presence was taken over by the Feds. So, this defendant was negotiating to buy ricin via email and chat with Federal Agents. Those emails were the evidence that removed all doubt and got the defendant convicted. Those emails clearly spelled out the negotiation that the defendant used to buy Ricin. The defendant admitted that the emails were sent from his laptop and were still on his laptop. Guilty.
The defendant’s story was that an associate who he refused to name or identify had been using his laptop in his apartment just before the Feds raided him and that associate was the one negotiating the ricin purchase via email with the Feds. The Feds had his apartment under 24 hr. surveillance and never saw anyone enter or leave the defendant’s apartment except the defendant. No associate existed.
The defendant’s defense that a phantom associate committed the crime was a bad lie, an obvious lie. The defendant was an unbelievably bad liar and it showed during his testimony. He thought we were idiots.
The Feds testified that when they raided the defendant’s apartment, he was using his laptop and they observed his laptop screen logged in to the email accounts used to negotiate the ricin buy. And when the defendant powered off the laptop the Feds were never able to see those email accounts again because the laptop was encrypted and they were unable to break in without the password. The Feds asked us to believe them when they said they witnessed the defendant’s laptop logged into the email accounts used to negotiate the ricin purchase. The defendant never disputed that testimony and asked us to believe that his associate was the one using the laptop. It was obvious the associate did not exist and the kid was a bad liar. His attorney should be disbarred for allowing this kid to make a fool of himself with such a bad story.
The principle the defense could have used is that once a witness admits to lying then we can no longer believe anything that witness says again.
The Feds who took over the drug dealer’s dark web account lied by saying they were the drug dealer. The defense attorney could have made them testify to this in court. The defense attorney could have made the Feds admitted liars. These same Feds also testified that they observed the defendant using his laptop logged into the email accounts that negotiated the ricin purchase. This was the only evidence that linked the defendant to the damaging emails. The eyewitness testimony of admitted liars. Without the email evidence linking the defendant to the emails, the Feds case was destroyed. The defense lawyer could have called up those Feds who admitted lying about being the drug dealer and asked them if they were lying about witnessing the defendant’s laptop logged into the email accounts. The defendant could then say he was not the owner of those email accounts and that he had never seen those emails and that the Feds were lying again when they testified that they saw the laptop logged in to those email accounts. Reasonable doubt. No Conviction on the most serious charge and the rest of the case falls apart.
Lessons Learned:
Never buy illegal stuff from Law Enforcement
Take a drunken horse thief and sober him up and you still have a horse thief.
Tell the truth.
Tell the truth.
Tell the truth.
/Sober Robert