Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs -> Second Opinions

Federal Judiciary

: Second Opinions

Terror Publicity. The owner of an ice cream parlor in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who had been convicted of illegally funneling money from the business to Yemen in violation of U.S. law. There had been some publicity about his terror connections, and he was convicted. On appeal, he raised the issue of the pretrial publicity. A divided Second Circuit held that he had waived the defense because, although he had raised the issue, he had not asked that the jurors be polled to see if they had seen the publicity. Without such a poll, there was no evidence that the jury had been affected by the publicity. Judge Sack dissented, in part because of the publicity issue, which he thought violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.

The decision in United States v. Elfgeeh can be found here.

Full post as published by Second Opinions on February 15, 2008 (boomark / email).