Race issues halt jury selection in Sears Tower terror case
MIAMI -- A federal judge halted jury selection Wednesday over racial issues in the third trial of six black men accused of plotting with al-Qaida to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices.
The jury was supposed to be completed Wednesday, but defense attorneys for the so-called "Liberty City Six" repeatedly accused prosecutors of systematically trying to exclude black jurors. When a young Haitian-American man was removed -- many of the young male defendants are of Haitian descent -- defense lawyers objected to the entire panel.
"There would be nobody on this panel -- this does not constitute a jury of his peers," said Rod Vereen, attorney for defendant Stanley Phanor.
Although three black jurors had been chosen out of 11 seated, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard called a halt so both sides could file legal briefs about the racial and ethnic questions. Testimony had been expected to begin next week, but that timetable is now in question.
The makeup of the jury is particularly crucial because two previous trials have ended in hung juries for the six men, with one man acquitted after the first trial. The men face up to 70 years in prison if convicted of four terrorism-related accounts, including conspiracy to support al-Qaida and conspiracy to levy war against the U.S.
At a daylong hearing Wednesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers traded charges that each side sought jurors of a certain ethnicity to favor their respective sides. For prosecutors, it was whites and Hispanics; for the defense, it was blacks.
Jurors cannot legally be removed solely because of race, meaning each side had to find other reasons to justify their exclusion.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Arango rejected defense charges that blacks were being systematically excluded, contending the defense sought to keep whites and Hispanics out.
"These people are grasping at straws for reasons to get rid of somebody," Arango said.
Defense lawyers claimed the opposite.
"The reasons they are giving are clearly a pretext for striking black jurors," said attorney Nathan Clark, who represents Rotschild Augustine.
Prosecutors say the group, led by 34-year-old Narseal Batiste, sought an alliance with al-Qaida to stage major terror attacks. They took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden -- captured by the FBI on videotape -- led by a man claiming to be an al-Qaida emissary. That man was actually an FBI informant posing as a terror financier.
Batiste testified at the previous trials that he was never serious about any terror plots and was only playing along in hopes of getting $50,000 from the emissary.