Terror prosecutors want Edward Snowden's name banned from trial

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Terror prosecutors want Edward Snowden's name banned from trial

Associated Press in Chicago
Thursday 4 June 2015 03.04 BST

Prosecutors want a federal judge in a Chicago terrorism case to prohibit the defence from mentioning Edward Snowden at a 21-year-old suspect’s upcoming trial.

The government filing is in Adel Daoud’s case. He has pleaded not guilty to trying to set off a bomb outside a Chicago bar.

An appeals court in 2014 denied a defence request to go through foreign intelligence surveillance court (Fisa) records on Daoud. The defence had argued the records could help with trial preparation.

It was Snowden who disclosed how that court secretly approved expanded US surveillance methods.

Prosecutors worry the defence could seek to blurt out Snowden’s name and related topics at Daoud’s trial in July. They say the defence shouldn’t be able “to encourage the jury to disregard the evidence because of the means of collection”.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/04/terror-prosecutors-want-edward-snowdens-name-banned-from-trial

[bemildred]

1. Must be an airtight case.

[CincyDem]

2. Ahhh...wasn't that kind of the point of the 4th Amendment ?

Where are all our strict constitutionalists on the right? IIRC, the 4th Amendment specifically requires courts (and by extension, a jury) to consider the means of collection when evaluating evidence.

These guys are soooooooooo out of control.

[daleanime]

5. For too many it's not about any kind of truth....

it's all about control.


Of everything except themselves.

[leveymg]

3. And, don't dare mention "parallel construction" . . . don't even think about it.

[blackspade]

4. So, a defendant now has the right to a limited defense?

WTF?

Prosecutors are pathetic.

[kenfrequed]

9. They have been for a long time

They are more concerned with their win record than getting at the truth. Manditory minimums and the obscene excesses of the War on Drugs indicated that.

The media has gone along for the ride for a long time. Where once you had Perry Mason, a show about a heroic defense attorney, now it is a cornucopia of Law and Order shows where the police and the DA always get it right. Why should it surprise anyone that terror prosecutors would be any less insane?

[Man from Pickens]

6. The idea "terror trial" was Tsarnev's

Defendant confined in isolation, never gets a chance to speak in private to a lawyer or at all to the media, is assigned a public defender whose first words in court are to declare him guilty, and then eventually the accused is put to death, all without ever getting to put forth another side of the story.

[leveymg]

10. Has to do with Tamarlan's trip to Russia/Chechnya and his being allowed back in while he was still

a person of interest to an ongoing murder investigation and after he had been listed by the CIA as a terror suspect.

Tamarlan wasn't a US Citizen - Homeland Security should have stopped him at the airport upon his return from abroad, but there is no record they did so. Why is that? If he was under surveillance, why and when did that stop?

[Man from Pickens]

11. please don't ask questions

as I said the ideal trial is one where the prosecutor's version is completely and immediately accepted by the defense, so that no facts have to be actually proven in court - that's way too much of an inconvenience

[leveymg]

12. Those were the questions that will never be answered because they can't be asked.

Similar line of inconvenient questions that can never be asked of the vast majority of surviving 9/11 co-conspirators.

[Cryptoad]

7. Cmrade Snowden frees Terriost ,,,,,,?

[-none]

8. What ever happened to the concept of a fair and impartial trial?

The guy has pleaded not guilty. Let the prosecution prove otherwise on the available facts, without hamstringing the defense up front.
But I can't but wonder if this is another FBI or some other alphabet law enforcement agency sting, to show that government spying on everyone before the fact, somehow works to "keep us safe".