RhetIraq

Who: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), Syracuse University
Source: TRAC Reports
Quotes: From report titled, "Criminal Terrorism Enforcement in the United States During the Five Years Since the 9/11/01 Attacks"

[Blogger's Note: The following excerpts are from the report. The following represents less than 1/3 of the entire report and are direct quotes within the report. None of this blogger's comments or opinions appear in the post below, or in any of the posts at RhetIraq unless they are within a bracketed, italicized note such as this. Readers are encouraged to view the entire report at the links provided.]

A comprehensive and sometimes surprising portrait of the handling of criminal cases in the United States against individuals identified as international terrorists during the five years after 9/11/01 has emerged from an analysis of hundreds of thousands Justice Department records by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

Among the key findings about the year-by-year enforcement trends in the period were the following:

In the twelve months immediately after 9/11, the prosecution of individuals the government classified as international terrorists surged sharply higher than in the previous year. But timely data show that five years later, in the latest available period, the total number of these prosecutions has returned to roughly what they were just before the attacks. Given the widely accepted belief that the threat of terrorism in all parts of the world is much larger today than it was six or seven years ago, the extent of the recent decline in prosecutions is unexpected.

Federal prosecutors by law and custom are authorized to decline cases that are brought to them for prosecution by the investigative agencies. For international terrorism the declination rate has been high, especially in recent years. In fact, timely data show that in the first eight months of FY 2006 the assistant U.S. Attorneys rejected slightly more than nine out of ten of the referrals. Given the assumption that the investigation of international terrorism must be the single most important target area for the FBI and other agencies, the turn-down rate is hard to understand.

The typical sentences recently imposed on individuals considered to be international terrorists are not impressive. For all those convicted as a result of cases initiated in the two years after 9//11, for example, the median sentence -- half got more and half got less-- was 28 days. For those referrals that came in more recently -- through May 31, 2006 -- the median sentence was 20 days. For cases started in the two year period before the 9/11 attack, the typical sentence was much longer, 41 months. See Figure 3.

The question of the basic competence of the Bush Administration in managing the overall response of the United States to terrorism has in recent months become a subject of debate for candidates of both parties. Several months ago, on June 22, the Bush Administration itself weighed into the discussion directly when the Justice Department issued what it called a "Counterterrorism White Paper."

The Big Picture

Since 9/11/01 the government has classified a very large number of individuals as either a "terrorists" or "anti-terrorists." The bulk of them, some 6,472 individuals, were referred during the two years following the 9/11 attack. Now five years since the attack, final outcomes have been determined on three out of four of these cases.

Despite the low success rate in obtaining convictions, the large absolute number of referrals coming from the agencies (nearly 6,500 of them) has resulted in a sizable number of convictions (1,329). For this group it is instructive to consider the penalties that were imposed:

... the median or typical prison sentence for them all was zero because the majority received no time at all in prison.

Zeroing in on International Terrorism Trends

For some kinds of crime, the number of prosecutions in a given area may be a better measure of official concern about a particular problem than the actual threat. And given the deep public concerns immediately after the attacks, the very large number of international terrorism prosecutions in FY 2002 is hardly surprising. Considering the numerous warning statements from President Bush and other federal officials about the continuing nature of the terrorism threat, however, the gradual decline in these cases since the FY 2002 high point and the high rate at which prosecutors are declining to prosecute terrorism cases raises questions.

Lead Charge in International Terrorism Cases

While the FBI led the federal government in the volume of referrals for criminal prosecution for international terrorists, federal prosecutors declined as not warranting filing charges a much higher proportion of its referrals for prosecution than referrals from most other agencies. Prosecutors filed charges on only 18 percent of FBI referrals and declined to prosecute 82 percent. More of the cases dropped by the wayside at the court stage. This means that less than one out of ten FBI cases disposed of during the five year period resulted in the defendant being convicted for any crime.

In contrast, it was the Social Security Administration (SSA) which racked up the highest success rate in terms of the proportion federal prosecutors decided to proceed and prosecute in court (92% prosecuted versus 8% declined), and slightly over three out of four (76%) of cases that had reached completion resulted in a conviction. Presumably, the comparatively better record of the SSA was partly related to the fact that its cases were less complex. For the 50 SSA convictions, the median sentence was one month.

International Terrorism Cases by Federal Judicial District

... one district -- Eastern Virginia (Alexandria) -- was by a huge margin the government's favorite venue. In this district, located just south of the District of Columbia, the Justice Department recorded receiving somewhat more than a quarter of all referrals -- 297 out of the 1,322 total -- that were finally classified as international terrorism.

The District of Columbia and the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) were the next two busiest districts -- in terms of the number of criminal referrals -- with 82 and 80 respectively. South Carolina and the Western District of New York (Buffalo) had, respectively, 65 and 63 criminal international terrorist referrals.

Many questions are raised by this distribution. The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, for example, says that:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Critics note that the heavy concentration of international terrorism referrals in Virginia East strains the principle that defendants should be brought to trial in the district and state where their crime occurred. They also argue that prosecutors favor bringing cases here because the juries in the area near the Pentagon naturally have a large proportion of active and retired military personnel and its circuit court of appeals is among the most conservation in the United States.