The Defense of Rasmea Yousef Odeh -- Part Two: The Guilty Plea

This is the second of three four posts on the Rasmea Odeh case. Part One is here. This installment discusses the circumstances of Odeh's guilty plea.

Represented by the estimable Michael Deutsch, Odeh succeeded in obtaining a new trial following her 2014 conviction for naturalization fraud. The appellate court held that it had been error to exclude expert testimony on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which supported the defense that she had “automatically” filtered out her entire time in Israel when she answered questions about her past arrest, conviction, sentence, and imprisonment for terrorist bombings.  At the new trial, Odeh would have been allowed to testify to her alleged torture at the hands of the Israeli police, and to present evidence that the resulting PTSD had led to her to innocently provide incorrect answers in her naturalization proceeding.

Rather than take that opportunity, however, Odeh pled guilty on April 25, accepting a sentence of time served, along with revocation of her U.S. citizenship and deportation to an as yet undetermined country. As part of her guilty plea, Odeh signed a 27 page agreement in which she admitted to making eight false statements on her visa and citizenship applications. Moreover, she admitted that:

She made the false statements intentionally and not as a result of any mistake, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or any other psychological issue or condition or for any innocent reason, and notwithstanding any other statement or testimony Defendant Odeh may have made at any other time regarding those answers.

In addition,

At the time she made the false statements, Defendant knew that it was unlawful for her to provide false information to the United States Department of State and to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in connection with her application for Immigrant Visa and her application for naturalization.

In other words, the whole PTSD story had been a contrivance.  Odeh admitted that her alleged PTSD had not caused her to answer the naturalization questions incorrectly, and that she had known all along that she was intentionally lying in order to obtain U.S. citizenship.

A question remains: Why did Odeh plead guilty and admit lying rather than present the PTSD defense – for which Deutsch argued so effectively to the appellate court – in a second jury trial?  One obvious answer is that there was a stark conflict between the PTSD theory and her actual testimony at the first trial.  Odeh told the first jury that she recalled the naturalization interview and denied that she had been advised that the questions covered “anywhere in the world.” Thus, she consciously understood the questions as referring only to her time in the U.S.  That would have been contradicted by her expert’s claim that she had subconsciously “filtered out” everything related to Israel, answering “automatically” that she had never been arrested or convicted anywhere.  The two stories were jointly untenable, as the prosecution would have been certain to point out at a second trial.

A further problem for the defense was the existence of an Arabic language television documentary, in which Odeh had essentially admitted planting a bomb at the British consulate in Jerusalem (it failed to explode), and in which two other Palestinian women discussed Odeh’s leadership in the supermarket bombing.  This evidence was not offered in the first trial because it was irrelevant in the absence of the PTSD claim, but the prosecution clearly intended to offer it – and was preparing to subpoena the Palestinian witnesses – for the retrial (there was also physical evidence of her participation in the bombings).  In other words, Odeh had talked herself into a corner, and was facing devastating impeachment no matter how the retrial proceeded.

Odeh would not have been the first criminal defendant to end up contradicting her lawyer’s best efforts, nor was she the first to make up a story in order to get out of a jam.  People in serious trouble do desperate things, and truth is all too easily sacrificed in favor of expedience. After all, that is how Odeh obtained her U.S. citizenship in the first place, and there is no reason to have expected more of her as she tried to keep it.

But what about Odeh’s lawyer and supporters?  Michael Deutsch also signed the plea agreement acknowledging that the PTSD defense had been groundless, and Odeh’s supporters continue to make claims about her innocence.  That will be the subject of the next and final post.

NOTE ON SPELLING: Odeh's supporters typically refer to her by her first name, spelling it "Rasmea."  I have primarily used her last name, as I would with any other public figure. For those who want to search further, Odeh's first name is spelled "Rasmieh" on most official documents, including the indictment and judicial opinion.

Comments

[Stan Nadel]

But JVP and other Odeh supporters keep insisting on the fairy tale about PTSD and torture. Asking why they would do so leads to some very damning conclusions.