Death penalty challenged by pirates accused in Seattleites' murder
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) - Attorneys for three Somalis charged with murder in the shooting deaths of four Americans, including a Seattle couple, aboard a yacht off the coast of Africa want a federal judge to stop prosecutors from seeking a possible death penalty because they contend it is unconstitutional.
Ahmed Muse Salad, Abukar Osman Beyle and Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar face a number of charges that could bring them the death penalty arising from the February, 2011 hijacking of the yacht Quest. They include hostage-taking resulting in death, violence against maritime navigation resulting in death and kidnapping resulting in death. In all, 22 of the 26 counts with which the defendants are charged are death-eligible offenses. Their trial is scheduled to begin in 2013 and they have pleaded not guilty.
Executions under federal law are extremely rare, with only three out of more than 1,300 executions since 1976 having been carried out by the federal government, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty statistics and is opposed to the death penalty.
"Most of the awful kind of criminal cases you can think of are covered by state law," said Jeff Bellin, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. "The federal death penalty is unusual just because there's not that many cases that fall under it."
Attorneys for the Somali suspects wrote in a court filing that the federal death penalty's infrequent use makes it arbitrary and unconstitutional, violating defendants' rights to due process, equal protection of the law and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
"Being sentenced to death in the federal system is truly akin to being struck by lightning. Indeed, no meaningful basis may be discerned for distinguishing the cases - even among the most extreme - where death is imposed from cases in which it is not," a filing submitted last week said.
Prosecutors have not yet responded to the filing.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, declined to comment.
Bellin, who reviewed the court filing, said defense attorneys broke little new legal ground with their challenge.
"It's an active case so I don't want to doom them to failure, but in terms of, legally, the arguments they're making in this motion are not new legal challenges and they've generally been rejected by the courts," he said.
The decision to seek the death penalty was made by Attorney General Eric Holder. In a filing by federal prosecutors signaling their intent to seek the death penalty if the men are convicted, they noted that the men killed or attempted to kill more than one person during a single episode and endangered the U.S. military. Americans were killed "in an especially wanton and gratuitous manner," prosecutors wrote.
The owners of the yacht, Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey, Calif., along with friends Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay of Seattle, were the first Americans to be killed in a wave of pirate attacks off the coast of east Africa despite an international flotilla of warships that regularly patrol the area. The Adamses had been sailing full-time on their 58-foot yacht since December 2004 after retiring when their boat was boarded several hundred miles south of Oman by 19 men who were looking to ransom the hostages.
Twelve other men connected to the case have already either pleaded guilty or been convicted of piracy and sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors are hoping each conviction will send a message to prospective pirates not to board an American-flagged ship.
Ahmed Muse Salad, Abukar Osman Beyle and Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar face a number of charges that could bring them the death penalty arising from the February, 2011 hijacking of the yacht Quest. They include hostage-taking resulting in death, violence against maritime navigation resulting in death and kidnapping resulting in death. In all, 22 of the 26 counts with which the defendants are charged are death-eligible offenses. Their trial is scheduled to begin in 2013 and they have pleaded not guilty.
Executions under federal law are extremely rare, with only three out of more than 1,300 executions since 1976 having been carried out by the federal government, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty statistics and is opposed to the death penalty.
"Most of the awful kind of criminal cases you can think of are covered by state law," said Jeff Bellin, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. "The federal death penalty is unusual just because there's not that many cases that fall under it."
Attorneys for the Somali suspects wrote in a court filing that the federal death penalty's infrequent use makes it arbitrary and unconstitutional, violating defendants' rights to due process, equal protection of the law and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
"Being sentenced to death in the federal system is truly akin to being struck by lightning. Indeed, no meaningful basis may be discerned for distinguishing the cases - even among the most extreme - where death is imposed from cases in which it is not," a filing submitted last week said.
Prosecutors have not yet responded to the filing.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, declined to comment.
Bellin, who reviewed the court filing, said defense attorneys broke little new legal ground with their challenge.
"It's an active case so I don't want to doom them to failure, but in terms of, legally, the arguments they're making in this motion are not new legal challenges and they've generally been rejected by the courts," he said.
The decision to seek the death penalty was made by Attorney General Eric Holder. In a filing by federal prosecutors signaling their intent to seek the death penalty if the men are convicted, they noted that the men killed or attempted to kill more than one person during a single episode and endangered the U.S. military. Americans were killed "in an especially wanton and gratuitous manner," prosecutors wrote.
The owners of the yacht, Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey, Calif., along with friends Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay of Seattle, were the first Americans to be killed in a wave of pirate attacks off the coast of east Africa despite an international flotilla of warships that regularly patrol the area. The Adamses had been sailing full-time on their 58-foot yacht since December 2004 after retiring when their boat was boarded several hundred miles south of Oman by 19 men who were looking to ransom the hostages.
Twelve other men connected to the case have already either pleaded guilty or been convicted of piracy and sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors are hoping each conviction will send a message to prospective pirates not to board an American-flagged ship.
LOL Â look at the republicans here dreaming up ways to kill in their minds. Â How pathetic. Â Reminds me of the Bush years when these same people got sexual gratification from photos and stories of torture committed by Americans. Â I would say you have become the enemy but maybe you always were. Â Â
@Andrew Bush Your bigoted hate speech is offensive an slanderous. I do not know where you come up with these deranged fantasies about the hateful unfounded things you spew about Republicans. You serisously need to get some counciling to deal with your irational hatred.
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You sir help perpetuate the claim some people make that liberalism is a mental disorder.
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I am a conservative, I am a Marine Corps vet, and I am not the enemy just because I think these murdering terrorists should be put to death. It is the only way to remove them as a threat. If we detain them there is no guarantee they will not be released to do it again in some political prisoner exchange or appeasment release.Â
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You should read up on your history about the Barbary Pirates. Appeasment did not work. What worked is we sent our military over there and killed enough of them to make them stop attacking our merchant ships.
What is unconstitutional, is the fact these two Somalis killed or at least contributed to killing two innocent people. Makes me sick this is going on.
of COURSE they want life in prison! Roof over their heads and 3 squares a day for YEARSÂ - bunch of BS.....if pirates know that's they worst they have to expect, what's stopping them. This is ridiculous. Do the crime, pay the piper.
execute them, then we can have the discussion...
Thet should have been dropped out of a plane at 20K feet over the Atlantic Ocean. Cheap and effecient justice served.
What is the worst way to die? Guess allot of people have their ideas of what would constitute a bad death depending on their personal fears or squeamishness. Got mine from a short story by Edgar Allen Poe called:
The Premature Burial. My punishment would be having the guilty murderer anesthetized to awaken an hour later
and find himself buried in a coffin with a book of matches. he can light the matches to see where he is but I wouldn't recommend it since it would use up the little remaining oxygen but then on the other hand it might make it easier to die quicker instead of drawing it out with the little air that is left after each inhale.,...I'll be generous and leave the choice to him.
 @joefuss Piracy is a naval based crime. Keelhauling till dead would be more appropriate, I think.
 @joefuss Not bad, but a good ol'-fashioned drawing-and-quartering makes for FAR more spectacle...
"Attorneys for three Somalis charged with murder in the shooting deaths of four Americans, including a Seattle couple, aboard a yacht off the coast of Africa want a federal judge to stop prosecutors from seeking a possible death penalty because they contend it is unconstitutional."
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Too bad their victims didn't have that chance to protest THEIR deaths...
Ok, Wiki says that Somalia has three tiers of legal distinction, a civil law branch that bows entirely to Sharia Law, and so is meaningless in international context, Sharia which definitely does include the death penalty for piracy, kidnap, and murder; and a form of apparently wholly indigenous law called Xeer, where blood money, or diya, is an allowable form of recompense for harming a person or even death. This is often used to cover property damages as well. This form of law dates back to the 7th century around the Horn of Africa region, as far as they can tell so far. From what I can see, Sharia is the ruling law of their land, and with that being the case, their argument against the death penalty itself is without merit, as we could have tried them in Somalia with the same sentence over their heads. So once again, we are left at consistency. If we can't prove that, there's no death penalty here for them. Which means we can still try them again, even in Somalia if things don't look good here. Because the thing about Sharia is; it considers itself above any other form of practiced law anyway.
One more time for those paying attention, the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution says:
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No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
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'nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;"
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Clearly the constition is saying one can be deprived of life with due process. The death penalty is clearly constitutional. Â
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If a lawyer cannot understand what is crystal clear in the constitution, they should be disbarred as they are incompetent.
 @Nitroxman And one more thing. There's no guarantee that any of the lead attorneys for the defense will have ever even seen a U.S. Constitution, nor is it required to defend this case, although there will indeed be a host of international and domestic attorneys backing them up. Amnesty International and many other international and domestic attorneys have been waiting to take this specific type of thing on in America. This case sets precedent, and because it covers our entire nation as well as international conduct, the top lawyers on the planet will be involved.
 @FreeCoffeeNow!  @Nitroxman So in other words, they'd better be executed... or else?
 @Nitroxman I guarantee you wouldn't want to have to blindly defend the Constitution in this case. It's the implementation of the death penalty at issue, not it's merit or it's specifics under our law. With only 3 out of 1300 sentences carried out, it shows glaring inconsistency in practice. No law is valid if inconsistent in the way it is carried through implementation.
@freecoffeenow  It is easy to demonstrate how it is the appeals proceess that keeps it from being implimented on a more consistant basis. That of course is an over simplified counter argument but it is just as valid and compelling as the claim of inconsistency in application.
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I am not sure what you mean by blindly defend the Constitution in this case?? Too much is lost in text so I am not sure what you are infering with that statement and I do not want to assume.
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 @Nitroxman Our Constitution doesn't typically get enforced evenly when it is called into practice by the prosecution. We've been watching this fact for many decades now. Our Constitution gets enforced by the defense. What is enforced by the prosecution is all the obfuscating subsequent laws and conditions that are actually far away from our core legal document. Even our own published Rights of Man pale into insignificance when considered against many of these types of cases that take place here.
Sorry guys but in the words of your own religion.
"An eye for an eye".
You don't want to be hypocrites do you?
Yes, ladies, they really are gonna fight it. What's even worse is that the attorney's the prosecutors will be facing will be backed with some serious firepower from U.S. top attorneys that have been waiting to attack the death penalty from the top down. There is major international legal support and funding support available as well. The problem is consistency. Without the requirement of consistency, there is no valid law, no matter what the law is supposed to do. The government is going to be pressed hard on this one, no doubt about it.
Since these crimes were not committed on US soil and these pukes are not US citizens I fail to understand how any Constitutional rights were violated. I guess every two bit criminal in the world wants to hide behind our Constitution when they get caught.
But if someone make a stupid video or draws a cartoon they demand death to them and do not want the Constitution applied to our own citizens but Sharia. I guess they get to pick and choose.
 @Nitroxman That's why the death penalty is such a huge concern internationally, same as here. In practice, it is inconsistent in other lands just like here. Got a rich grandma? Don't worry. Got a powerful uncle? No sweat. Got a influential cleric in the family? Fugget aboud it.
If anything, NOW, because of these filthy MURDERERS whining and their failure to own up to their evil deeds including their brutal KILLING OF INNOCENT AMERICANS, their penalty needs to be INCREASED from mere hanging to impaling.
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Immediate (and usually very painful types of), execution has ALWAYS been the penalty for pirating, since the earliest days of recorded history, and probably before even then!
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At the very least: HANG 'EM HIGH!
I say hang them bastards from a yardarm. They wanted a pirates life, well they can have a pirates death as well.
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...why are they still alive...shoulda been takin' care of already...isn't that why they have the periodic free shank day in the jails?
 @Sydthepiper You know, I commonly have to hit the like button many times before it actually takes. This time I didn't mind one bit.
let me see if I get this right. these guys hijacked a yacht, took and murdered four innocent people and now are trying to say that being put to death for choosing to cause the death of others is unconstitutional? how can the death penalty be 'cruel and unusual' for the crimes these pirates committed?
ummm.... really? They are claiming the death penalty unconstitutional? Where was this moral compass that has suddenly appeared when they CHOSE to kidnap and murder innocent people?Â
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If anyone deserves the death penalty, it is these scumbags.