Thursday, November 08, 2007

Big cases

1. The government has moved to disqualify the Federal Public Defender's office in the Joe Cool case. Here's an article covering the latest from the hearing. Judge Huck is considering the motion and hasn't ruled yet.

2. Narseal Batiste is still on the stand in the Liberty City 7 case. Here's the latest from Jay Weaver:

In effect, Batiste and his lawyer, Ana Jhones, tried to leave a dozen Miami-Dade jurors with the impression that the ringleader only talked about waging holy war as a ruse to obtain big bucks from Assad."I wanted the money for support. That was the only reason I was there," said Batiste, who was barely scraping by as he tried to launch a religious group called the Moorish Science Temple in a concrete warehouse in Liberty City. The religion blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam.Batiste also testified that al-Saidi coached him to put on a "show" for Assad, saying that he would likely get his money if he provided details of a terror plot to the Middle Eastern contact."If you're going to get this support, you have to do something," Batiste recalled al-Saidi telling him before Assad's arrival in December 2005."The only plan I had was to clean up our community," Batiste testified.

No comments: