Jose Padilla was convicted on all counts by a Miami jury after brief deliberations yesterday. He faces life in prison on charges that he conspired with a terrorist group to commit murder. Sentencing is set for early Decemeber. The guideline sentence is, at the very least, very long, and quite possibly life in prison. It remains to be seen if the judge will consider the uncharged conduct alleged by the government that constituted a basis for his enemy combatant detention. U.S. law permits acquitted and uncharged conduct to be considered by a judge at sentencing, so long as consideration of it does not increase the maximum sentence for the offense.
His co-defendants have planned to appeal, I suspect that he will as well. The strongest argument on appeal is probably that a conspiracy to murder charge requires more proof of either an agreement to conduct murder, or an attempted or completed murder arising from the conspiracy than was shown at trial and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
An appeal in one of the most conservative court of appeals circuits in the country has an uncertain prospect of success.
2 comments:
Isn't it José and not Jose?
I don't know how to do accent marks in the blogger interface. The only time I use them is when I cut and paste. This sometimes works, but sometimes creates anomolous characters, for reasons I don't understand.
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