[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday vacated and remanded the 22-year prison sentence for so-called “millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam, finding that the district court’s failure to follow proper sentencing guidelines resulted in an inappropriately lenient sentence. Ressam, an al Qaeda-trained terrorist, was originally sentenced in 2005 after being convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999. The court found that the district court failed to properly consider the sentencing guidelines, which would have required a minimum prison sentence of 65 years. The prosecution offered Ressam a reduced sentence in exchange for his cooperation against other terrorist suspects, but, over time, Ressam failed to properly cooperate with US government officials. The court found:
\nThe procedural errors identified in the district court’s decision rendered the sentence imposed on Ressam both procedurally and substantively unreasonable. Because the sentence is procedurally flawed, meaningful appellate review is foreclosed. Based upon our review of the record before us, however, it appears that the district court abused its discretion in weighing the relevant factors by giving too much weight to Ressam’s cooperation and not enough weight to the other relevant \u00a7 3553(a) factors, including the need to protect the public.The court ordered that on remand, the case will be transferred to a different district judge for sentencing.In December 2008, the US District Court for the Western District of Washington re-issued a sentence of 22 years in prison. In May 2008, the US Supreme Court voted 8-1 to uphold Ressam’s conviction. The Court reversed the judgment of the Ninth Circuit and ruled that Ressam could be convicted and sentenced under a law punishing the carrying of explosives while committing a felony even if the explosives were not related to the felony offense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday vacated and remanded the 22-year prison sentence for so-called “millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam, finding that the district court’s failure to follow proper sentencing guidelines resulted in an inappropriately lenient sentence. Ressam, an al Qaeda-trained terrorist, was originally sentenced in 2005 after being convicted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4174,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}