MILNET:

MILNET Brief
Status Hearing for Lodi Terrorism Suspects Umer and Hamad Hayat
Updated 7/01/2005

Overview

Hamad Hayat, and his father, an ice cream vendor named Umer Hayat, were scheduled for a status hearing with Federal District Court Magistrate Garland Burrell on July 1, 2005. Also expected to attend are their attorneys Wazhma Mojaddidi (for Hamad) and Johnny Griffin (for Umer). Also expected is the translator who has attended all court sessions with Hamad, a woman identified only in the case summary as Kamal, who typically wears a semi-traditional Muslim head scarf but not veiled.

Details

Judge Garland Burrell was commissioned to the court on March 2, 1992 after serving for 16 years in the legal provision after a two year tour in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Judge Burrell has served as the Deputy District Attorney and Deputy City Attorney in Sacramento, as well as Deputy Chief and Chief of the U.S. Attorney's Civil Division as well as the Senior Chief of the City Attorney's office.

Analysis

(Previous to the Status Hearing)

Nothing said by the defense has refuted the validity of the evidence so far, and other than the argument over whether the government has to prove a case of terrorism (Johnny Griffin's position) or simply that a lied occurred in the investigation (the government's position), there does not appear to be any reason that a trail date cannot be set at the conclusion of the hearing. It is also very unlikely that the defense will change the plea from not guilty, however, with the video tapes of interrogations and the lie detector tests, the defense may opt to hope for a lenient sentence.

A guilty plea may move things along quite quickly, with the government then facing a decision of when to file n a new set of charges in the expected terrorism case. With the defandents incarcerated, the government will have a lot more time to finish their investigation and fine tune their prosecution of those terrorism charges.

Status Hearing

The Status Hearing is an informal discussion between the Judge, the prosecution and the defendant about the case. After considering the case, the defendant may decide whether to change the plea or to continue with a guilty plea.

At the hearing the defendant is able to discuss the case with the prosecutor, learn what the arresting authority says was done that was illegal and why that person is guilty. The defendant is allowed to ask questions about anything they don't understand.

The defendant can be represented by an attorney at the hearing, and the attorney may speak for the defendant on all matters.

Examples of things that could happen at a status hearing are:

The charges could be changed or withdrawn
The defendant can ask the Judge what the likely sentence would be (not binding).
The defendant can decide to change their plea

It is worthwhile to note that the defendant does not have to tell anyone about the planned defense at this time.

A typical outcome of a status hearing is the setting of dates for hearings on motions that require time to deliberate or ultimately, the actual trial date could be set.
The trial date will be set when the preliminary discovery is complete and the judge believes the government has supplied adequate probable cause and has met the burden of proof necessary to bind the defendant over for trial.

If the plea remains at not guilty, then Griffin has expressed a desire to set a court date of August 2.

At the hearing

In response to the government's CIPA notice of 6/27/2005 and the request by the government to declare the case a complex case, Federal Magistrate Burrell began the CIPA process by ordering the government to prepare and present a brief on those topics on 7/06/2005, ordered the defense to respond to the brief and the government to reply to the defense's response on 7/11/2005. Judge Burrell also ordered an In Court Hearing on the CIPA issue on 7/15/2005 at 10:00 am..

Judge Burrell, having heard nothing that would prevent the trial from moving forward, set a pre-trial conference hearing for 8/19/2005 at 2:00 pm, and a preliminary Jury Trial begin date for 8/23/2005.