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Judge opposes vagueness in anti terror laws { January 30 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/j30patriot.htmlhttp://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/j30patriot.html
Friday, January 30, 2004
JUDGE OPPOSES ‘VAGUENESS’ IN ANTI-TERROR LAWS
Patriot Act Ruling One of Several on ‘Material Support’ Provision
BY MOLLY McDONOUGH
A federal court ruling released Monday may be the first declaring a portion of the USA Patriot Act unconstitutional, but is one of several limiting federal laws against providing personnel and training to terrorist groups.
U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins in Los Angeles has issued three separate rulings, and twice the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed her orders in the lawsuit.
In her latest ruling, Collins declared that the sweeping anti-terrorism act’s ban on providing "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists is impermissibly vague under the First Amendment. She refused plaintiffs’ request for a nationwide injunction to enjoin enforcement of the provision, however. Humanitarian Law Project v. Ashcroft, No. CV 03-6107 ABC.
While refusing to go as far as the plaintiffs would have liked, Collins granted an injunction against prosecution to plaintiffs who demonstrated they faced a credible threat of such an action. Her ruling is consistent with previous decisions dating back to 1998 when she found a portion of the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs include several humanitarian workers and organizations that say they want to work toward peaceful solutions to conflicts with Kurdish refugees in Turkey and Tamil residents in Sri Lanka. At issue are the plaintiffs’ ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers. Both groups were designated terrorist organizations in 1997.
The plaintiffs say that because they fear prosecution and the threat of 15-year-plus prison terms under the AEDPA and the subsequent Patriot Act, they have stopped supporting the lawful, nonviolent activities of the two groups, including development of medical programs to the regions they control.
Plaintiffs’ arguments involve a provision in the AEDPA that bars anyone from providing material support including "personnel" and "training" to designated foreign terrorist organizations. The Patriot Act amends the material support section to include a ban on providing "expert advice or assistance" to such groups.
In 1998, Collins issued a limited injunction barring federal prosecutors from enforcing charges against individuals who provided personnel and training because she said those terms were too vague. The 9th Circuit upheld her decision in 2000. Humanitarian Law Project v. Reno, 205 F.3d 1130
The 9th Circuit revisited the case in a Dec. 3, 2003 ruling, reaffirming that the "training" and "personnel" terms are void for vagueness and saying for the first time that the government must prove a defendant knowingly provided material support to a terrorist group in order to be convicted under the act. Humanitarian Law Project v. Ashcroft, No. 02-55082. Both sides are seeking a review en banc.
U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Mark Corallo defends the Patriot Act. "The Patriot Act is an essential tool in the war on terror and has played a key part—and often the leading role—in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists dedicated to destroying America and our way of life," he says.
The Justice Department has used the AEDPA and Patriot Act to prosecute several individuals it believes have aided terrorism organizations with money and technical experience.
"By targeting those who provide material support by providing ‘expert advice or assistance,’ the law made clear that Americans are threatened as much by the person who teaches a terrorist to build a bomb as by the one who pushes the button," Corallo says.
The Justice Department says it is reviewing Collins’ decision. Plaintiffs celebrated Collins’ decision as a victory against what they see as the administration’s overreaching anti-terrorism campaign.
"The decision is important because it is the first court ruling that a provision of the Patriot Act is unconstitutional," says plaintiffs’ lawyer Nancy Chang, senior litigation attorney at the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights. Further, Chang says, "The decision signals a wariness on the part of the judiciary of statutes that broadly define terrorist crimes."
The Patriot Act is timed to sunset in 2005, though the Bush administration is pushing for an extension. At its annual meeting in August, the policy-making ABA House of Delegates opposed a repeal of the sunset provision.
Miami lawyer Neal R. Sonnett, former chair of the ABA’s Criminal Justice Section, says the benefit of the sunset provision is that it will give Congress a chance to redraw and amend portions of the Patriot Act that have troubled courts. "The Patriot Act does deserve to have a full review by Congress," Sonnett says.
©2004 ABA Journal
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