Judge in terror case urged to avoid ‘spectacle’
Defense worried about protections for witness
Attorneys for an Everett man charged in a 2015 plot to behead police in tribute to ISIS are urging a federal judge to avoid a “spectacle” that might alarm jurors when he decides how to protect the government’s star witness: a confidential FBI informant.
Protective security measures for the witness are expected to be addressed at a hearing Wednesday ahead of the Sept. 18 start of jury selection in David Daoud Wright’s terrorism trial.
U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young last month refused a request by prosecutors to bar the public, press and sketch artists from the courtroom when the witness testifies, but said in his decision, “The Court will devise adequate protective security measures for the witness while at the same time, preserving the defendant’s rights of confrontation.”
Young did not say what those measures might entail.
Wright’s lawyers appealed to Young, “Whatever measures are adopted by this Court, it should avoid a spectacle which would not be lost on the jury, and which would undoubtedly prejudice the Defendant. Jurors who see special precautions taken for the safety of a witness will naturally assume that the necessity is due to a danger posed by the Defendant.”
Prosecutors allege Wright, 28, told the witness, a fellow inmate at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, he “would personally remove his head from his body” if Wright found out he was sharing their jailhouse banter with law enforcement.
“Bluntly, the government’s source is a veteran jailhouse snitch, whereas Mr. Wright is inexperienced, isolated, and prone to loquaciousness — in other words, easy pickins,” the defense team told Young. “That this is a terrorism case, rather than a drug conspiracy or racketeering case, does not automatically elevate the risk in the way the government suggests.”
Wright is charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and obstruction of justice. His uncle, Usaamah Rahim, 26, was shot dead in Roslindale in 2015 while brandishing a 13-inch knife at police and federal agents.
The feds fear disclosure of the witness’ identity will jeopardize his safety and his family in Yemen by having their names potentially land on ISIS kill lists.
“Certainly, being included on such a list is an unattractive prospect, and the threat posed by ISISaligned social-media combatants should not be entirely discounted. But it should be weighed soberly,” Wright’s attorneys responded in their filing. “Allowing the general specter of ISIS and its online activities to dictate how the court conducts trials, and what rights of the defendant and the public the court is proactively willing to curtail, risks handing ISIS a cheaply-won victory with little demonstrated benefit.”