The Defense of Rasmea Yousef Odeh -- Part One: Background

This threefour-part post is about the defense tactics of the lawyers and supporters of Rasmea Yousef Odeh. Part One is background:

Although the Odeh case has generated great controversy, there has never actually been any real dispute about the central facts.  After spending ten years in an Israeli prison for the terrorist bombing of a supermarket in Jerusalem, Odeh emigrated from Jordan to the United States, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen in 2004.  Odeh, however, did not tell the truth on her initial visa and citizenship applications, falsely stating, among other things, that she had never been convicted of a crime.  The citizenship application was unambiguous, including the following questions (capitalization in original):

Have you EVER been arrested, cited, or detained by any law enforcement officer (including INS and military officers), for any reason?

Have you EVER been charged with committing any crime or offense?

Have you EVER been convicted of a crime or offense?

Have you EVER been in jail or prison?

Odeh answered “no” to all of those questions under oath, even though she had been sentenced to  life imprisonment for the murder of two Hebrew University students who were killed in the supermarket bombing, as well as her participation in an unsuccessful bombing of the British consulate. (Her early release had been part of a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in Lebanon, and she also falsely omitted the fact that she had lived in Lebanon after she was freed). In 2013, Odeh was indicted and arrested for felony naturalization fraud, which can result in a lengthy prison sentence, revocation of citizenship, and deportation.

Defending Odeh presented an obvious problem, as there could be no doubt that she had been arrested, charged, convicted, and imprisoned, thus making all four of her answers (and several others) untruthful.  Even if she had been innocent of the Israeli terrorism charges (which was not the case, in my opinion), her answers on the citizenship application were still glaringly false.

After initial plea discussions broke down, Odeh retained Michael Deutsch, one of the most talented and creative lawyers on the American left, and a veteran of Chicago’s legendary People’s Law Office.  Deutsch and the defense team raised the novel defense that Odeh suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder due to mistreatment at the hands of the Israelis, which had prevented her from properly understanding the questions in the citizenship examination.  Notwithstanding the capitalization of EVER, they claimed that Odeh’s PTSD caused her to think that the question only covered her life in the U.S., and she had thus answered it truthfully.

Despite the evident implausibility of the claim – how could anyone forget having spent ten years in prison? – Deutsch located a clinical psychologist who was willing to testify that Odeh’s PTSD would have “automatically” caused her to “filter out” her entire time in Israel, thus keeping her from answering the questions accurately. The district court, however, excluded the PTSD testimony and the case went to trial in late 2014.

The immigration officer who administered Odeh’s 2004 naturalization proceeding testified that she had repeated the questions from the application, adding “anywhere in the world,” and Odeh had confirmed her answers. Odeh testified that she had misunderstood the questions and had consciously believed that they had referred only to her time in the United States. Contradicting the immigration officer, she denied that the questions had been explained as applying to “anywhere in the world.”  Following a relatively brief deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict.

On appeal, however, the conviction was reversed and remanded because of the trial court's ruling on the admissibility of the PTSD expert. On remand, the district court ordered a new trial in which Odeh's PTSD evidence would be allowed.

This time, however, the plea negotiations were concluded and Odeh pled guilty on April 25, 2017.  The circumstances of the guilty plea will be discussed in Part Two, as a lead-in to the ethics issues.

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.

UPDATE: This post has been slightly edited for clarity.

Comments

[PaulB]

The role that the clinical psychologist played in supporting this ludicrous claim is why attorneys who actually practice criminal law have nothing but contempt for that "profession."