Mohamed Mohamud, the young Somali-American accused of trying to blow up Portland's Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Pioneer Courthouse Square more than two years, has been found guilty today of attempting to detonate a weapon of mass destruction.

The Oregonian has a pretty quickly topped story up right now on the verdict, announced just after 3. The paper also says Mohamud will appeal his conviction.

The jury handed up its verdict after less than a full day of deliberations in a trial that began Jan. 10 in a downtown courtroom just a few blocks from the scene of the crime.

Mohamud, a 21-year-old Somali American, was convicted of the only charge confronting him: trying to use a weapon of mass destruction. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison. Sentencing was set for May 14.

Mohamud was never in possession of actual explosives. He was nurtured by FBI operatives mounting a sting operation—an increasingly common antiterrorism tactic. Immediately after Mohamud's arrest, entrapment emerged as a major issue. Like in other FBI terror stings, what would have been the keystone recording in the case—the recording that captured Mohamud's first meeting with operatives—was missing.

The O mentions the groundwork Mohamud's attorneys laid toward that eventual appeal.

Among the key points: U.S. District Judge Garr M. King, who presided in the case, ruled that Mohamud's lawyers could not know the true identity of the undercover agents who helped make the sting; he said giving up their names would put the agents' lives at risk and potentially damage ongoing national security cases.

By not allowing the defense to know the identities of the agents, who were allowed to use their pseudonyms at trial, the defense could make no inquiries about whether the agents had been disciplined or been found to have lied in previous cases.

After pressing this arsenal of nasty charges:

Aaron Swartz's legacy was already guaranteed, even at 26: He helped create Reddit and RSS, which distributes content over the Internet.

But his suicide by hanging Friday has also stoked a politically malignant aftermath for the prosecutors pursuing 13 felony charges against him in a trial that was set to begin in a month. Some said his death could be a watershed moment in the ongoing intellectual property debate over the things people share and create, and how they share and create them.

Swartz, an open-Internet advocate who had struggled with depression, was facing decades of prison time and charges that included wire fraud for downloading millions of articles from JSTOR, a nonprofit academic database with a paywall. JSTOR declined to press charges, but prosecutors, led by Massachusetts U.S. Atty. Carmen Ortiz, moved the case forward.

The Swartz family released this statement:

"Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims."

Carmen Ortiz was being a bully, trying to make an example out of Swartz. She wasn't trying to just punish him, after all; she was throwing an egregious decades-long prison term at him to prove a point. Now Ortiz is getting what she had coming: People are making an example out of her. It's a reputation Ortiz deserves as a lesson to other prosecutors (and every US attorney and US Department of Justice employee) that being overzealous in their official capacity, with all the backing of law, can result in being saddled with personal lifelong disgrace. Even prosecutors should balk, protest, or quit when the job asks them to do something immoral.

"Waitasecond," I hear you say. "Why does the Mercury need a lawyer?" Oh, I don't know... let me ask the filing cabinet full of cease & desist orders, lawsuits from angry people we've written about, and old, still pending restraining orders from when Matt Davis was an employee. HOWEVER! I think we've finally found a lawyer who can wipe our distressing legal slate clean. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Adam Reposa: Lawyer.

• John Brennan, upon hearing his "not guilty" verdict, by lovely courtroom artist Carolyn Main

I think Oregon's protections of nudity as free speech should be a model for the rest of the country, but even places such as California ban nudity on a city-by-city basis. It seems to me that our laws around nudity work well to allow effective (and hilarious) protests like Brennan's, but haven't created a nudity spree that the authors of other states' laws probably fear.

I spelled out Oregon's laws yesterday, but here's the simple version: Our constitution states that "no law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion." While Portland and other cities have local laws banning public nudity, Brennan's is the latest in several court cases that uphold the idea that Portland's obscenity law doesn't apply when the nudity is meant symbolically as a form of protest.

The prosecution raised a decent point during yesterday's trial: What's to keep anyone arrested for indecent exposure from getting off the hook by declaring after the fact that the dong-waggling was actually a protest? But that's exactly what the role of judges and juries is—to determine on a case-by-case basis whether the person's de-briefing is actually a protest or a meaningless obscene display. This case reinforces that Oregon's law and courts are working the way they should. As Brennan said yesterday, "I was aware of the irony of taking off my clothes to protect my privacy."

• John Brennan: Naked American Hero, now clothed.

Original post:

In April, Portland John Brennan performed the protest that's been seared into our memory: Stripping naked for TSA at the Portland airport.

Today Brennan is on trial for his alleged lewdness, heading to Multnomah County Courthouse at 9am on charges of indecent exposure.

Brennan, hilariously, shares the same name as Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser. No, the man in the room for the Osama Bin Laden raid is not the same man who is now selling "Expose Yourself to Liberty" t-shirts. But they're both concerned about America's response to terrorist threats, which is why Brennan might get off scot free today. Nudity is an unusually well-protected right under Oregon law and several people have tested the limits of nudity as free speech in previous court cases. Meanwhile, Brennan has been rallying support on Facebook, where he's known as "John Brennan AKA Naked American Hero."

The district attorney already reduced Brennan's misdemeanor indecent exposure charge to a violation, which means that even if he is found guilty, he will mostly likely only have to pay a fine. His trial may take a while or be delayed, so I'll update below the cut throughout the morning!

Continue reading »

• Sarah Mirk
• ACLU lawyers speak with reporters following last January's arguments

Taking the FBI to court is no piece of cake. Since June 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been fighting behind a major lawsuit filed against the FBI, claiming that the federal government's "No Fly List" is unconstitutional. What does this have to do with Portland? One of the 15 plaintiffs who have been placed on the list, Mohamed Sheikh Abdirahman Kariye, is a Portland resident and Portland's federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which represents the entire West Coast) is expected to be more open to the case itself.

Today, ACLU lawyers and representatives brought their arguments against the federal process to Pioneer Courthouse in front of Judge Alex Kozinski (for the second time). The main problem the ACLU has is that the list violates the right of due process, because the government does not tell people whether they've been placed on the list, why they're suspect, or provide an adequate way to get someone's name off.

"It's a sham," says ACLU spokesman David Fidanque. "The FBI tries to hide their information behind the TSA [Transportation Security Administration], but really they're the ones who can change the process."

If a person on the no fly list wants to investigate their placement, the FBI directs them to file a TSA grievance. However, says Fidanque, the TSA ultimately has no power. Thus, it creates a vicious and frustrating cycle to potentially innocent people.

"If we can't get these people off the list, the least we could ask for is an explanation as to why they're on the list," Fidangue says.

Today's hearing, while it highlighted the ACLU's arguments, was mainly meant to see if the case could even go forward in the federal court. Staying true to the glacial pace of this lawsuit, Fidanque says that it could take up to three months to get an answer. We'll follow up with the ACLU later on to see if this case has wings at the federal level.

The verdict is in on the long-awaited trial of an alleged gay bashing that occurred outside Blow Pony back in April 2009.

I detailed the whole story in court yesterday. Local DJ and queer activist Airick Heater pressed charges against alleged basher Blake McCune, who was on trial for two crimes: intimidating someone because of their sexual orientation and interfering with a police report, for slapping a cell phone out of Heater's hand as he tried to call 911

This morning the jury determined that McCune was guilty of interfering with a police report. But they determined he was not guilty of intimidation for calling Heater a "fag" and allegedly punching him in the face.

The not guilty is probably a result of the seriously conflicting stories witnesses told yesterday about the incident. Two witnesses (who are McCune's friends) told the jury that no one was shouting gay slurs during the incident, as Heater alleged, and that no one was punched in the face. A prosecution witness (who was friends with neither side) said he definitely saw McCune punch Heater in the face, but could not speak to hearing any of the gay slurs.

Update 2:21pm— For the crime of interfering with a police report, McCune received 18 months probation and 80 hours of community service. His lawyer, Troy Pickard, says McCune plans to do the community service with some type of GLBT advocacy group.