Judge deciding on statements in Pulse trial

After hearing testimony Thursday and Friday, a federal judge will decide whether jurors will see statements the widow of the Pulse nightclub shooter made to FBI agents the day of the attack.

Noor Salman is facing charges of aiding a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice. Her husband, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people and injured dozens more at Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, and was shot and killed by police after a three-hour standoff.

Her attorneys argued that everything she told the FBI in the hours after the attack should be excluded from trial because she was in custody and not given proper Miranda warnings. U.S. attorneys argued that she was not in custody, free to leave at any time, and that all her statements were voluntary.

Judge Paul Byron said Friday that he would read over testimony, review evidence and announce his decision in a written order. He did not say when he expects to release that order.

Salman’s attorney, Charles Swift, said Thursday that his client might testify at the hearing but said Friday that she would not. Salman sat quietly in the courtroom.

Swift argued that Salman was in custody from the moment Fort Pierce officers asked her to leave her apartment and sit in an unmarked police car in the parking lot with her son until FBI agents arrived. He also asked the judge to look at the moment she was driven to the FBI offices in Fort Pierce and at the moment her brother-in-law arrived to pick up her son from the FBI so she could continue speaking with agents.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Sweeney argued that she agreed to take all those steps. The unmarked car Salman sat in had the door open and no divider between the front and back seats, Sweeney said, and she sat with her feet on the ground outside the car.

Salman agreed to speak with FBI agents and also said no when law enforcement officers asked for permission to search home, Sweeney said.

“She was never in custody,” Sweeney said. “A reasonable, innocent person would not feel that they were in custody.”

Much of the evidence against Salman comes from interviews with FBI agents at the bureau’s her Fort Pierce office the morning and afternoon of June 12.

She first told them she knew Mateen visited extremist websites but had no knowledge of an attack. But in the third statement she gave an agent, she said she and Mateen drove around the club for about 20 minutes with the windows down during a visit to Orlando, agents said Thursday.

She also saw him looking at a photo of the club online on June 10, agents said. He told her that was his target.

Agents did not record audio or video of the interviews, but they do have interview notes and three statements handwritten by an agent and signed by Salman.

Her trial is scheduled for March 1 in Orlando.