The Plea Bargaining Blog

According to CNN , Farooque Ahmed, the individual accused of plotting to bomb the Washington D.C. Metro, has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. After apologizing for his actions and telling the court "[i]t was the wrong action," Ahmed was sentenced to 23 years in prison and 50 years of supervised release. Ahmed had pleaded not guilty last year. In changing his plea, he admitted that he attempted to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization. He also pleaded guilty to collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility. In court documents, Ahmed admitted performing surveillance at Metro stations near the Pentagon, taking videos and making diagrams of possible places to locate bombs. He suggested between 4 and 5 p.m. "would be the best time to stage an attack to cause the highest number of casualties" in several simultaneous explosions, according to a statement of facts signed by Ahmed....

Last week, in a sharply divided 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a $14 million jury award to John Thompson, a former death row inmate who spent 18 years in prison and was eventually freed after serious prosecutorial misconduct came to light. According to the New York Times : The former inmate, John Thompson, had sued Harry F. Connick, a former district attorney in New Orleans, saying his office had not trained prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors in the office had failed to give Mr. Thompson’s lawyers a report showing that blood at a crime scene was not his. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that only a pattern of misconduct would warrant holding Mr. Connick accountable for what happened on his watch. Mr. Thompson spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row. “I was delivered an execution warrant in my cell seven times,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “I was only weeks from being executed when my lawyers got the killing...

According to CNN , Army Spc. Jeremy Morlock pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges that he intentionally killed Afghan civilians in 2010. During the plea proceedings, the judge asked Morlock if he and his fellow soldiers just meant to scare civilians and it "got out of hand." To this question, Morlock is reported to have stated, "The plan was to kill people." Another soldier, Pfc. Andrew Holmes, also faces charges in the case, but a start date for his court-martial has not been publicly announced. In all, officials charged 12 U.S. soldiers in what they called a conspiracy to kill Afghan civilians and cover it up, along with charges they mutilated corpses and kept grisly souvenirs. Morlock was the first of the five to face an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Holmes is charged with the premeditated deaths of three civilians, possessing a dismembered human finger, wrongfully possessing photographs of human c...

According to Fox News , Lindsay Lohan has rejected a plea deal and will proceed to trial. Lohan currently faces charges for allegedly stealing a $2,500 necklace from a Venice, California jewelry store in January. At the time of the alleged offense, Lohan was on probation. The plea offer from prosecutors would have required Lohan to serve jail time. A once-promising star of Disney films such as "Freaky Friday" and "Herbie Fully Loaded," Lohan's career has been stalled since she was arrested twice in 2007 and later charged with drunken driving and drug possession. In the past 10 months, Lohan has been jailed twice and sent to rehab twice for probation violations. A judge ordered her to undergo three months of treatment at the Betty Ford Center, and it was within three weeks of her release that she was accused of stealing the necklace. While the theft case has caused more uncertainty for Lohan, it might benefit others. The owners of Kamofie & Co. announced Wedn...

The Georgia State University Law Review will host me to present my article, The Surprising Lessons From Plea Bargaining in the Shadow of Terror , which appeared in the Winter 2010 volume. I will be discussing plea bargaining in the terrorism context. The presentation will occur from noon to 1pm at the Georgia State University College of Law. Please register by Wednesday, February 9 by emailing cweatherford2@gsu.edu.

According to reports from CNN , Colleen LaRose, the suspect authorities say labeled herself "Jihad Jane" on YouTube, will enter a plea of guilty related to charges she was plotting to wage violent Jihad overseas. According to her attorney, LaRose will plead guilty in federal court in Philadelphia next week to charges she conspired to support terrorists and kill someone overseas. The alleged plot involved plans to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog in 2007. She is also accused of lying to federal agents and identity theft. She faces up to life in prison. In 2009, LaRose had been sharing a home with a boyfriend and taking care of his elderly father near Philadelphia before suddenly disappearing. At the time, her boyfriend told CNN that she spent a lot of time on his computer. That computer and others were seized after LaRose's arrest. She was taken into custody in Ireland, according to federal authorities. Court papers stated ...

According to reports from CNN , Guantanamo Bay's youngest detainee, Omar Khadr, pleaded guilty to the charges against him on Monday. The Sentencing Law and Policy Blog also has a post regarding the plea deal. Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to charges against him Monday, the Pentagon said, in the first military commission trial there since Barack Obama became president. Khadr, 24, was accused of throwing a grenade during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a Special Forces medic. He also admitted that he "converted landmines to Improvised Explosive Devices and assisted in the planting of 10 IEDs with the intent of killing American forces" in the months before killing Speer, the Pentagon said. Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was 15 at the time. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. He pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war, attempted murder in vio...