Baker

Holy fucking shit anons.

"Judge: Lodi man’s terrorism convictions should be vacated

Hayat’s Sixth Amendment rights were violated by the defense put on by an inexperienced lawyer who had never before selected a jury or tried a criminal case in federal court.

Hayat’s Sacramento trial attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, said she hoped the end result would be freedom for her former client.

“I passionately represented Hamid Hayat as a young attorney and worked with a great team of lawyers and investigators in his defense,” she wrote in an email to The Sacramento Bee. “I have always believed that he is an innocent man who was wrongly convicted.

Hayat and his father Umer, an ice cream peddler, were arrested in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in what became the first major terror prosecution following the hijackings.

Umer Hayat was accused of lying to the FBI about whether his son had trained in a Pakistani terror camp, and later went free after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

But Hamid Hayat was convicted in 2005 of lying to the FBI and providing support to terrorists and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Now 36, Hayat is serving his time at a federal lockup near Phoenix and has a projected release date of May 2026.

During last year’s hearings, Barnes heard testimony from nationally respected legal scholars and alibi witnesses in Pakistan who testified that while he was visiting Pakistan he was never out of their sight long enough to visit any training camps.

His lawyers also argued that the government had withheld evidence that the camp Hayat supposedly visited was not in operation while he was in Pakistan.

Barnes rejected those arguments, saying they were based “purely on speculation.”

https://amp.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article224315150.html