Judicial Reports: LexPress: Spies Like Us

By Jesse Sunenblick 
jsunenblick@judicialstudies.com
Posted: 03-25-08 

Attorneys for two Albany-area Muslim men challenging their convictions on terror charges ask the Second Circuit to make public government evidence that may prove the men were illegally spied upon by the National Security Agency.  

WIRETAP UNDER WRAPS 
Yesterday, we reported on the Second Circuit’s hearing of an appeal by two Albany-area Muslim men who are serving 15 years in prison for allegedly embezzling money connected to a fictitious terror plot concocted by the FBI to use shoulder-launched missiles to assassinate of a Pakistani diplomat in New York. Today The New York Times explores a central element in the case — whether government evidence kept under wraps in 2006 by the trial judge, the Northern District’s Thomas J. McAvoy, suggests the two men were improperly spied upon by the National Security Agency. An attorney from the New York Civil Liberties asked the panel to lift McAvoy’s order keeping the documents “behind closed doors,” even if it means issuing a redacted version. The case is believed to be one of the strongest challenges to the NSA’s much-disputed warrantless wiretapping program, since it touches on Constitutional protections afforded to criminal defendants.

IRAQI JUDGE SPEAKS 
The Iraqi judge who presided over the trial of Saddam Hussein — now a fellow at Cornell University — gave a rousing speech yesterday at Cornell Law School, analyzing the country’s judicial system in the midst of war and 300,000 claims filed by Iraqi citizens against the former regime. “I think it's going real well,” Stewart Schwab, Dean of Cornell Law School, said of the judge’s time on campus. “He is very personable. He is very thoughtful. Our main goal was to give him some quiet space where he could be a scholar. He is starting to give public lectures, which is an opportunity for everybody to hear his firsthand experiences.” The Ithaca Journal has more on the event, while News 10 Now has a link to the speech itself.

BUILDING A CRANE CASE 
And, from The New York Sun comes word that the brother of a construction worker who died in the Upper East Side crane collapse plans on suing the city and other parties involved. Yesterday, he filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court asking the city to preserve evidence collected from the site, as well as statements by the the commissioner of the Department of Buildings, Patricia Lancaster, who said in the wake of an inspector’s arrest that even if an inspection of the crane had occurred, it would not have prevented the March 15 crane collapse. “The buildings department had taken parts of the tower and the beam that was being used to secure the tower to the building, and the slings,” said Alan Leibowitz, attorney for Christopher Canzona. “They had taken them off-site. We’re interested that they be preserved during the pending of any lawsuit.”

Posted by Jesse on March 25, 2008 09:09 AM to Judicial Reports