Source: http://openjurist.org/412/f3d/1071/united-states-v-afshari
Timestamp: 2013-06-18 22:31:41
Document Index: 264496816

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1189', '§ 1182', '§ 1189', '§ 2339', '§ 2339', '§ 2339', '§ 1326', '§ 1189', '§ 2339', '§ 402']

412 F3d 1071 United States v. Afshari | OpenJurist
412 F. 3d 1071 - United States v. Afshari	Home412 f3d 1071 united states v. afshari
412 F3d 1071 United States v. Afshari 412 F.3d 1071
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellant,v.Hossein AFSHARI, aka Hosseini Deklami; Mohammad Omidvar; Hassan Rezaie; Roya Rahmani, aka Sister Tahmineh; Navid Taj, aka Najaf Eshkoftegi; Mustafa Ahmady; Alireza Mohamad Moradi, Defendants-Appellees.American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California Inc; The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Amici Curaie.
Douglas N. Letter, Yoel Tobin, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., Ronald L. Cheng, ULSA-Office of the U.S. Attorney, Crim.Div., Los Angeles, CA, for the appellant.
Stephen P. Berzon, Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin & Demain, San Francisco, CA, Abbe David Lowell, Sarah Loope, Chadbourne & Park LLP, Washington D.C., Sam Puathasnanon, Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, Jack DiCanio, Anthony Pacheco, Proskauer Rose, LLP, Los Angeles CA, for Roya Rahmani.
Richard Steingard, Los Angeles, CA, for Mustafa Ahmady.
Nadine C. Hettle, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Los Angeles, CA, for Hossein Afshari.
David R. Evans, Law Offices of David R. Evans, Pasadena, CA, for Alireza Mohammadmoradi.
Michael J. Treman, Santa Barbara, CA, for Mohammad Omidvar.
David R. Reed, Law Office of David R. Reed, Los Angeles, CA, for Navid Taj.
Yolanda Barrera, Law office of Yolanda Barrera, for Hassan Rezaie.
Margaret C. Crosby, San Francisco, CA, George C. Harris, Somnath Rah Chatterjee, Morrison and Foester, LLP, Ephraim Margolin, San Francisco, CA, for Amici Curiae.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Robert M. Takasugi, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CR-01-00209-RMT.
8 U.S.C. § 1189(a)(1) sets out a carefully articulated scheme for designating foreign terrorist organizations. To make the designation, the Secretary has to make specific findings that "the organization is a foreign organization"; that "the organization engages in terrorist activity (as defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B))"; and that "the terrorist activity of the organization threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States."7
The Secretary of State's designation is only the beginning. The Secretary also must furnish the congressional leadership advance notification of the designation and the factual basis for it, which Congress can reject.8 The designation is published in the Federal Register.9 The designated organization is entitled to judicial review of the Secretary's action in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.10 That court may set aside the designation for the ordinary administrative law reasons, such as that the designation is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law."11 That court may also set aside a designation for several other reasons, including that the designation is "contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity."12 Congress or the Secretary can revoke a designation.13 Among the concrete incentives that a designated organization has to contest the designation is that the Secretary of the Treasury may require American financial institutions to block all financial transactions involving its assets.14
Many administrative determinations are reviewable only by petition to the correct circuit court, bypassing the district court, and that procedure has generally been accepted.15 Many are reviewable only in the D.C. Circuit, or the Federal Circuit, and those restrictions have also been generally accepted.16 The congressional restriction does not interfere with the opportunity for judicial review, as the MEK's extensive litigation history shows. And this scheme avoids the awkwardness of criminalizing material support for a designated organization in some circuits but not others, as varying decisions in the different regional circuits might.
The statute assigns criminal penalties to one who "knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so."17 The statutory phrase "terrorist organization" is a term of art, defined by Congress as "an organization designated as a terrorist organization" under 8 U.S.C. § 1189(a)(1).18 The defendants' central argument is that § 2339B denies them their constitutional rights because it prohibits them from collaterally attacking the designation of a foreign terrorist organization. This contention was recently rejected by the Fourth Circuit en banc.19 We, too, reject it.
If a designation ... has become effective... a defendant in a criminal action or an alien in a removal proceeding shall not be permitted to raise any question concerning the validity of the issuance of such designation or redesignation as a defense or an objection at any trial or hearing.
The question then, is whether due process prohibits a prosecution under § 2339B when the predicate designation was obtained in an unconstitutional manner or is otherwise erroneous. In Lewis v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a prior conviction could properly be used as a predicate for a subsequent conviction for a felon in possession of a firearm, even though it had been obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.20 The Court held that it was proper to prohibit a collateral attack on the predicate during the criminal hearing because the felon-in-possession statute made no exception "for a person whose outstanding felony conviction ultimately might turn out to be invalid for any reason."21 The Court noted that the prohibition on collateral attack was proper because a convicted felon could challenge the validity of the conviction before he purchased his firearm.22
The defendants attempt to distinguish Lewis from this § 2339B prosecution because the defendant in Lewis had the ability to challenge his predicate, whereas here the defendants themselves are prohibited from challenging the designation. But this does not change the principle that a criminal proceeding may go forward, even if the predicate was in some way unconstitutional, so long as a sufficient opportunity for judicial review of the predicate exists. Here there was such an opportunity, which the MEK took advantage of each time it was designated a foreign terrorist organization.23
The defendants also attempt to distinguish Lewis by relying on United States v. Mendoza-Lopez.24 In that case, the Supreme Court held that a prosecution under 8 U.S.C. § 1326 for illegal reentry does not comport with due process if there is no judicial review of whether the predicate deportation proceeding violated the alien's rights.25 It is not at all clear from Mendoza-Lopez that the Supreme Court meant that the due process problem is in the later proceeding. The Court held that "where a determination made in an administrative proceeding is to play a critical role in the subsequent imposition of a criminal sanction, there must be some meaningful review of the administrative proceeding."26 Nothing in Mendoza-Lopez appears to require that this review be had by the defendant in the subsequent criminal proceeding.
Our holding is further supported by our decision in United States v. Bozarov.27 In Bozarov, we held that a defendant charged with exporting items listed under the Export Administration Act without a license did not have a due process right to collaterally attack the listing in his criminal proceeding.28 We held, however, that Bozarov had standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Export Act in his criminal proceeding.29 This was because the Export Act explicitly provided that all actions taken by the Secretary of Commerce under it were "not subject to judicial review," including a denial of the license that was a predicate for a violation of the criminal provision.30 If a defendant were not allowed to challenge the Export Act in that proceeding, there would be no arbiter of the constitutionality of the Export Act. In contrast, Congress has explicitly provided that the D.C. Circuit is the arbiter of the constitutionality of any designation under § 1189. Thus, there is no constitutional need for the defendants to challenge the predicate designation in this proceeding.
As we noted in another case where we rejected a defendant's right to challenge an export listing in a subsequent criminal proceeding, the defendants' argument here "is analogous to one by a defendant in a drug possession case that his conviction cannot stand because no specific showing has been made that the drug is a threat to society.... [A] showing that the drug possessed by the individual defendant has a `detrimental effect on the general welfare' [is not] an element of the offense."31 Likewise, the element of the crime that the prosecutor must prove in a § 2339B case is the predicate fact that a particular organization was designated at the time the material support was given, not whether the government made a correct designation. Our position is consistent with that of the Fourth Circuit, which held that a defendant's inability to challenge the designation was not a violation of his constitutional rights, since the validity of the designation is not an element of the crime.32 Rather, the element is the fact of an organization's designation as a "foreign terrorist organization."33
This argument is mistaken because what the defendants propose to do is not to engage in speech, but rather to provide material assistance. The statute says "knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization."34 The indictment charges them with sending money to the MEK.
The defendants argue that they seek to express their political views, not by supporting terrorism, but rather by supporting an organization that the State Department has mistakenly designated as terrorist.35 The due process part of this argument, that they are entitled to an opportunity in their criminal proceeding to relitigate whether the MEK is terrorist, is addressed above. Defendants also make a distinct free speech argument, however, based on McKinney v. Alabama.36
McKinney holds that the First Amendment rights of a newsstand proprietor were violated by his conviction under a statute that prohibited him from selling an obscene magazine.37 What is similar to this case is that the obscenity of the magazine in McKinney was adjudicated, not in the criminal defendant's proceeding, but in a previous in rem proceeding against the magazine to which the newsstand proprietor was not a party.38 The Court held that a decision in another proceeding could not conclusively determine First Amendment rights to sell a magazine of persons who had no notice and opportunity to be heard in that proceeding.39 By analogy, the defendants in this case argue that they should be entitled to litigate the terrorism designation of the MEK in their criminal case.
The argument fails, however, because the cases are not analogous. The magazine in McKinney was speech, the money sent to the MEK is not. Though contributions of money given to fund speech receive some First Amendment protection,40 it does not follow that all contributions of money are entitled to protection as though they were speech.
What is at issue here is not anything close to pure speech. It is, rather, material support to foreign organizations that the United States has deemed, through a lawful process, a threat to our national security. The fact that the support takes the form of money does not make the support the equivalent of speech. In this context, the donation of money could properly be viewed by the government as more like the donation of bombs and ammunition than speech.41 The "foreign terrorist organization" designation means that the Executive Branch has determined — and the D.C. Circuit has concluded that the determination was properly made — that materially supporting the organization is materially supporting actual violence.
Donations to designated foreign terrorist organizations are not akin to donations to domestic political parties or candidates. An organization cannot be designated unless it is foreign,42 so domestic associations are immune from the scheme. And in this case, there is no room for a vagueness challenge on the ground that the defendants were merely contributing what might arguably be in the nature of speech.43 The indictment charges them with sending money to the designated terrorist organization, not with providing instruction or advocacy.
We have already held that the strict scrutiny standard applicable to speech regulations does not apply to a prohibition against sending money to foreign terrorist organizations.44 That a group engages in politics and has political goals does not imply that all support for it is speech, or that it promotes its political goals by means of speech. Guns and bombs are not speech. Sometimes money serves as a proxy for speech, and sometimes it buys goods and services that are not speech.
The government "may certainly regulate contributions to organizations performing unlawful or harmful activities, even though such contributions may also express the donor's feelings about the recipient."45 There is no First Amendment right "to facilitate terrorism by giving terrorists the weapons and explosives with which to carry out their grisly missions."46
A less rigorous standard of review is applied to monetary contributions than to pure speech.47 Even giving money to perfectly legitimate political expression within the United States can be, and is, restricted by Congress, and such restrictions are consistent with the Constitution.48 A fortiori, contribution of money to foreign organizations that the United States has determined engage in terrorist activities can be restricted by Congress.49 It would be anomalous indeed if Congress could prohibit the contribution of money for television commercials that say why a candidate would be a good or bad choice for political office, yet could not prohibit contribution of money to a foreign group that the government determines engages in terrorist activities. Defendants are entitled under the First Amendment to publish articles arguing that the MEK is not really a terrorist organization, but they are not entitled to furnish bombs to the MEK, nor to furnish money to buy bombs and ammunition.
The deference due the Executive Branch in the area of national security reinforces our conclusion that furnishing material assistance to foreign terrorist organizations must be distinguished from the McKinney issue, furnishing obscene magazines.50
In McConnell, the Court found that "the prevention of corruption or its appearance constitutes a sufficiently important interest to justify political contribution limits."51 The interest in protecting our country from foreign terrorist organizations is a fortiori "a sufficiently important interest." "[T]he federal government clearly has the power to enact laws restricting the dealings of United States citizens with foreign entities."52 "[W]e must allow the political branches wide latitude in selecting the means to bring about the desired goal" of "preventing the United States from being used as a base for terrorist fundraising."53
Conceivably the MEK developed its practices at a time when the United States supported the previous regime in Iran, and maintained its position while harbored by the Saddam Hussein Ba`ath regime in Iraq. Maybe the MEK's position will change, or has changed, so that its interest in overturning the current regime in Iran coincides with the interests of the United States. Defendants could be right about the MEK. But that is not for us, or for a jury in defendants' case, to say. The sometimes subtle analysis of a foreign organization's political program to determine whether it is indeed a terrorist threat to the United States is particularly within the expertise of the State Department and the Executive Branch.54 Juries could not make reliable determinations without extensive foreign policy education and the disclosure of classified materials. Nor is it appropriate for a jury in a criminal case to make foreign policy decisions for the United States. Leaving the determination of whether a group is a "foreign terrorist organization" to the Executive Branch, coupled with the procedural protections and judicial review afforded by the statute, is both a reasonable and a constitutional way to make such determinations. The Constitution does not forbid Congress from requiring individuals, whether they agree with the Executive Branch determination or not, to refrain from furnishing material assistance to designated terrorist organizations during the period of designation.
(I) The highjacking or sabotage of any conveyance...
(III) A violent attack upon an internationally protected person ... or upon the liberty of such a person.
(b) explosive or firearm . . .,
See, e.g., 47 U.S.C. § 402(b) (vesting exclusive jurisdiction in the D.C. Circuit over appeals from certain decisions and orders of the Federal Communication Commission).
(1) Unlawful conduct — Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
This is an odd argument since the MEK itself has admitted that it has attacked various Iranian government organizations, assassinated several Iranian officials, and targeted Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei for assassinationSee People's Mojahedin Org. of Iran v. Dep't of State, 327 F.3d 1238, 1243 (D.C.Cir. 2003).
See Regan v. Wald, 468 U.S. 222, 242, 104 S.Ct. 3026, 82 L.Ed.2d 171 (1984) ("Matters relating `to the conduct of foreign relations... are so exclusively entrusted to the political branches of government as to be largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference.'") (quoting Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U.S. 580, 589, 72 S.Ct. 512, 96 L.Ed. 586 (1952)); Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965) (rejecting due process challenge to the Secretary of State's refusal to validate passports of United States citizens to travel to Cuba).
Home412 f3d 1071 united states v. afshari