February 17, 2010, - 11:54 am
OJ Jury Lives on in New York
Here’s yet another example of why criminal trials in New York–or anywhere–for Islamic terrorists has a pretty good chance of complete, epic failure. I’ve told you about Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid, an Islamic prison imam caught sneaking box-cutter blades into a New York Department of Corrections prison.
Well, he got away with it because an O. J. Simpson-style grand jury just couldn’t come to the obvious conclusion that he did anything wrong. And remember, this is a grand jury, not a jury. As they always say, you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, because the standard for admitting evidence (there isn’t one in a grand jury) is very low, as is the threshold for indictment. It’s a 50/50 chance or perhaps even better that, for example, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad would get such a group of incompetents in his jury.
A grand jury declined Tuesday to indict a Muslim chaplain accused of trying to smuggle razor blades and scissors into a jail, spurring his release without bail while the case continues.
Imam Zul-Qarnain Abdu-Shahid, whose arrest last week brought his 1970s murder conviction to light, still faces charges including felony counts of promoting prison contraband, at least for now. He’s due back in court for a status update April 27, and it’s unclear whether prosecutors will try again for an indictment.
In the meantime, he was released under a state law that limits how long felony defendants can be held without being indicted. He had been held on $50,000 bond.
Defense lawyer James McQueeney called Tuesday’s developments “a good sign” for Abdu-Shahid, who says he didn’t realize he had the items in his bag when he reported for work Feb. 3 at the Manhattan Detention Complex, nicknamed the Tombs.
Uh-huh, and John Dillinger didn’t know he was holding a gun.
The imam put the four razor blades in the bag months earlier after using them to scrape paint off a window at his Staten Island home and then forgot about them, McQueeney said. The scissors also had been dropped in the bag and forgotten, he said.
Prosecutors wouldn’t discuss the grand jury proceedings.
Of course, not. It was a complete failure for them.
Department of Correction spokesman Stephen Morello said Tuesday that jail officials would seek to fire Abdu-Shahid, who has been suspended without pay from the $49,000-a-year job he has held since 2007.
After Abdu-Shahid’s arrest, Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro ordered a review of the circumstances surrounding his hiring.
Janet Napolitano’s girlfriend, Dora Schriro, who set Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy to treat criminals and illegal aliens like hotel guests. Your “homeland” is as secure as the New York Department of Corrections, as in, not very. The review should have come BEFORE this event. The guy had a criminal record . . . for murder. Hello . . .?
Abdu-Shahid, then named Paul Pitts, was imprisoned from 1979 to 1993 after he and three other men were convicted in a deadly shooting during a robbery, state prison officials say. He was on parole until 2001.
McQueeney says Abdu-Shahid, 58, has reformed himself since the 1976 crime.
Yup, reformed himself to the point that he brings box-cutters to work. Sounds like “reformation” to me–the Islamic inmates literally running the asylum.
Tags: blades, Box Cutters, boxcutters, Dora Schriro, Grand Jury, imam, Islam, Muslim, New York Department of Corrections, New York prison, Paul Pitts, razor blades, Zul-qarnain Abdu-Shahid, Zulqarnain Abdu-Shahid
“As they always say, you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich,….”
So true!
I served on one this past fall. I had mistakenly thought a grand jury was this super like, mysterious jury. Nope, just regular people like a regular jury.
We signed an indictment for every single case that came before us. Most seemed to be slam dunks, but regardless our attitude was to just let them have their day in court and let a real jury sort it out.
Jeff_W on February 17, 2010 at 12:15 pm