Nov. 24, 2005
St. Petersburg Times
A lawyer for one of the defendants files the motion, citing an unofficial poll that surfaced last week in the jury room.
By Meg Laughlin
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TAMPA – Jurors in the five-month federal trial of Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants finished six days of deliberations Wednesday and broke for Thanksgiving, without a verdict.

They seem to be getting along. The deliberation room has been quiet, with no raised voices. Jurors have asked no questions to indicate they’re perplexed or arguing. The only bleep on the radar has been an unofficial poll in the Tampa Tribune that accidentally got into the jury room last Thursday. It was supposed to have been cut out of the newspaper by the assistant public defenders’ office, but was missed. Jurors notified the judge.

The small newspaper story, titled “Court of Public Opinion,” said that 87 percent of 1,225 people who participated in a Web site poll believe the jury will find former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian guilty.

In response to the poll, which at least one juror saw, Stephen Bernstein, attorney for defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh, filed a motion for a mistrial late Wednesday afternoon. The reason he stated:”The jury’s exposure . . . results in the denial of a fair trial.”

U.S. District James S. Moody has not had time to issue an opinion.

In the meantime, jurors seemed to be forging ahead in usual fashion, despite the poll. Wednesday, they lunched in nearby restaurants in small groups, gathered outside the courthouse in different groups and left the courthouse in still different groups, always chatting with each other.

They set up a schedule that adds an extra day to their workweek, planning to deliberate through Dec. 2, indicating they still have a lot of work to do – and, perhaps, indicating that something is afoot, despite their seeming cordiality.

“Lengthy deliberations usually mean a hung jury or acquittal,” said Robert Hirschhorn, a Texas jury expert who picked juries for the high-profile trials of William Kennedy Smith and Terry Nichols.

Despite four defendants, a complicated indictment and a long trial, Hirschhorn said jurors would have filled out verdict forms by now if they were in agreement.

“The T-word (terrorism) in this climate is often tantamount to guilt,” he said. “But you’re not getting a knee-jerk reaction from this jury. They’re taking things very seriously.”

Al-Arian is standing trial with Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatem Fariz and Ghassan Ballut, all accused in a 51-count indictment with conspiring to further the violent acts of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for hundreds of deaths in Israel and the occupied territories.

Prosecutors say the four men raised money for the PIJ, knowing it could be used for violence.

Defense attorneys say there is no evidence linking the money to anything but charity.

“A long deliberation is good for the defense,” said Hirschhorn. But he acknowledged a recent exception to that theory in another terrorism trial: The 2005 verdict in the case of Lynne Stewart, a defense attorney convicted of aiding terrorism in New York when she released an illegal statement from her imprisoned terrorist client.

Stewart’s jury deliberated for 13 days, spanning a month, then returned a guilty verdict.

But a month later, a juror complained to the federal judge that she and another juror wanted to acquit but were “coerced” and “intimidated” into voting for guilt.

According to the New York Times, the juror said she had been subjected “to a relentless verbal assault” over the month of deliberations.

As a result of the alleged pressure, the verdict from the seven-month Stewart trial may be overturned.

But no such acrimony was apparent when jurors for the Sami Al-Arian trial left the courthouse Wednesday afternoon. They walked slowly, chatting and waving farewell to each other. Monday, they return to continue deliberations.