Federal Victory in Terror Case May Prove Brief, Experts Say By JOHN M. BRODER April 27, 2006 LOS ANGELES, April 26 --- Despite predictions that their victory might not hold up on appeal, federal prosecutors on Wednesday savored their victory in a Sacramento courtroom, where a jury a day earlier convicted an American born in Pakistan of providing support to a terrorist group and lying to investigators. McGregor W. Scott, the United States attorney who oversaw the prosecution, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the conviction of the man, Hamid Hayat, 23, showed that the government was capable of winning a jury trial on terrorism charges after a number of high-profile failures elsewhere. "In this post-9/11 context, those of us in law enforcement have been tasked with preventing new acts of terrorism, trying to stop something from happening, rather than after the fact trying to establish what happened," Mr. Scott said. "This is a difficult task and a new mission. We have shown in this case and this trial and conviction that we can succeed in that mission." But legal experts said the prosecution's celebration might be short-lived because a federal appeals court had twice ruled unconstitutional some aspects of the law on which Mr. Hayat was convicted. They also said Mr. Hayat's reported confessions to F.B.I. agents could be challenged on the ground they were coerced from a frightened suspect with a limited command of English. Mr. Hayat's lawyer, Wazhma Mojaddidi, told reporters after the verdict on Tuesday that she would appeal, citing unspecified "outside influences" that affected the jury. She did not return telephone calls on Wednesday seeking comment. Eric M. Freedman, a constitutional law expert at Hofstra University who has consulted with defense lawyers in terrorism cases, said the government's record of prosecuting terror cases since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had been mixed, in part because several cases hinged on confessions rather than hard evidence. "This conviction bears all the hallmarks of one that is eventually overturned as being unsupported," Professor Freedman said. A potentially greater threat to the conviction lies in the statute on which Mr. Hayat was charged, which makes it a crime to provide "material support" for a terrorist group. The government charged that Mr. Hayat attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2003 or 2004, returning to the United States in the spring of 2005 with the intent of waging religious war. Upon his return, he was arrested and questioned. The government said he lied repeatedly to the F.B.I. about his training and intentions before confessing to plotting against the United States. The government never presented evidence that Mr. Hayat had participated in or planned any terrorist act. His crime, apart from lying to investigators, was providing support to violent extremist groups by attending their training camp. That law has helped win convictions in the so-called Lackawanna Six terrorism case and the prosecution of John Walker Lindh, the American who fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. But prosecutions based on the law collapsed in Tampa, Fla., where a jury last year acquitted a former professor charged with supporting extremist Palestinian groups, and in Idaho, where a college student was acquitted two years ago after being accused of aiding terrorists in Chechnya and Israel. David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and critic of the administration's application of antiterrorism laws, said that charging people under the material-support provision of a federal law was a "thin reed" on which to base prosecution. "It's a conviction," Professor Cole said of the Hayat case, "and to that extent it's a victory for the government. But has this made the United States one iota safer? I don't see any evidence of it. This is very likely to be overturned on appeal." Professor Cole said the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which sits in San Francisco and covers the Sacramento federal court district, had twice ruled the material-support law unconstitutionally vague because it did not require proof of any overt act. The government also charged Mr. Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, 48, an ice-cream truck driver in Lodi, Calif., of lying to investigators to conceal his son's activities. A separate jury deadlocked on two charges against the father, and the judge declared a mistrial. Mr. Scott said he had not decided on a new trial. ---------------------------------------- Juror Says She Was Pressured to Convict Defendant in California Terror Trial By CAROLYN MARSHALL April 29, 2006 SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 --- A juror who voted Tuesday to convict a Pakistani-American on federal terrorism charges now says that she never believed he was guilty and that she had been pressured by other jurors to change her mind and convict him. In a sworn affidavit filed in the Federal District Court in Sacramento late Thursday, the juror, Arcelia Lopez, said she had been bullied into finding Hamid Hayat, 23, of Lodi, Calif., guilty on four criminal charges --- one count of providing material support to a terrorist group by attending a training camp in Pakistan, and three counts of lying to federal agents about doing so. Ms. Lopez, a Sacramento resident, said she felt "stress and pressure" from the other jurors to change her vote to guilty. She said that several jurors had decided that Mr. Hayat was guilty even before viewing the evidence. "I never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty," Ms. Lopez said in the affidavit. "I deeply regret my decision." Mr. Hayat's lawyer, Wazhma Mojaddidi, filed a motion for a new trial immediately after obtaining the affidavit from Ms. Lopez. "I believe there was jury misconduct that compromised my client's right to a fair and impartial trial," Ms. Mojaddidi said in a telephone interview on Friday. The prosecutor in charge of the case, McGregor W. Scott, a United States attorney, said in a statement that Ms. Lopez's affidavit would not alter the guilty verdict and that Mr. Hayat remained convicted on all charges. He faces a minimum of 30 years in prison when he is sentenced. "It is a long-settled principle of law that second thoughts about a verdict by a juror are not enough to overturn that verdict," Mr. Scott said. "We will vigorously litigate this issue at the appropriate time in the courtroom. We are confident that we will prevail and that Hayat's conviction will stand." A separate jury reported earlier on Tuesday that it could not reach a verdict in the trial of Mr. Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, who was charged with lying to investigators to protect his son. At a bail hearing for Umer Hayat, Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. of Federal District Court both lowered his bail on Friday and ordered that he be released. Mr. Hayat's lawyer, Johnny L. Griffin III, said that his client would be released as early as Monday or as late as Tuesday and that "it's a done deal." The government has not yet decided whether to retry the elder Mr. Hayat and has until May 5 to make that decision.