The judge, who could dismiss the juror for his remarks, says one was "outside the case." But he doesn't note others.
By MEG LAUGHLIN
Published September 9, 2005
TAMPA - The federal judge in the trial of Sami Al-Arian ruled Thursday that there was no misconduct among two of three jurors whose actions have been under scrutiny for two weeks.
He said he would reserve ruling on the third juror, who, the two other jurors allege, made prejudicial comments about organizations run by the defendants.
What was noteworthy about the decision of U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. was not the decision itself, but his explanation of why he made it. And what was noteworthy about that was not what the judge focused on, but what he did not mention.
Moody explained his position by talking about an alleged comment by a juror that was peripheral to the case, not one supposedly made by the same juror that goes to the heart of the case.
The issue arose two weeks ago when a juror sent the judge an anonymous note. It said: "Could you just remind the jury to keep their opinions to their self?"
Moody responded by questioning the 12 jurors and the six alternates, asking most of them if they had "heard any discussion about the case" from other jurors. Each juror was questioned alone in the jury box, out of earshot of the others.
Two of the 18 said they had heard something.
"I've heard people making different comments about some things - comments about the school IAF (Islamic Academy of Florida). ... This particular juror believed it was a front for the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad)," said a juror.
Another juror said she had heard something: "one guy making little comments that WISE (World and Islam Studies Enterprise) and IAF were all a front ... and about somebody killed a member of Islamic Jihad (PIJ). ... When he's out, they're talking - him and the same two guys."
This juror said she had written the note.
Since the four defendants - Al-Arian, Sameeh Hammoudeh, Ghassan Ballut and Hatem Fariz - are charged with using IAF, a K-12 school, and other Tampa organizations as fronts to raise money for PIJ terrorist acts, the alleged comment about "fronts" involve something central to the case.
But that was not what the judge focused on in Thursday's ruling. Instead, it was the comment about the PIJ member being killed.
Earlier in the week, the judge further questioned the note-writing juror, asking her to read from her notes about the other juror's comments on the PIJ member being killed.
She said that on Aug. 25, the juror in question said PIJ leaders had been killed during the pullout from the Gaza Strip in the occupied territories.
The judge tracked the information to an Aug. 25 Tampa Tribune article, which should have been removed from the newspaper before it was given to jurors.
Thursday, Moody dismissed the comments of the juror in question, based on the newspaper article on the Gaza killing, as "comments outside the case."
But what he did not mention was the alleged comments about the Islamic Academy of Florida and WISE being "fronts."
WISE was a think tank founded by Al-Arian when he was a University of South Florida professor.
Before Thursday, Moody questioned the juror twice. The first time, Moody asked him if he had heard any discussion, not if he had made any comments. The juror said he hadn't.
The second time, Moody asked him if he had heard comments or made them since the first questioning. The juror in question said he hadn't, and, if he had, he didn't mean "to influence anyone."
But neither question from the judge dealt with the issue of whether the note-writing juror's initial complaint was provoked by a prejudicial comment about "fronts" from the juror in question. That part of the allegation seems to have been ignored by the judge, at least temporarily.
Thursday, after Moody talked about the murder of PIJ leaders on Aug. 25, Al-Arian's attorney Bill Moffitt told the judge: "I remind you that a juror was making comments about things being fronts."
The judge's response seemingly ignored the comment. "It's ironic that all of this came out of a paper we put in the jury room," Moody said, referring again to the killing and Gaza pullout and ignoring the issue that provoked the juror's note in the first place.
