Show I Man acquitted acqui acquitted in terror terro case faces deportation Peter The Washington Post The case of the Liberty City Seven stymied jurors After a three-month three trial late last year they deadlocked on nearly all of t the he e charges regarding the F purported plot by several men to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago The one thing jurors could agree upon however was that one of the men Lemorin 33 was not guilty I was excited Lemorin sa said d of his reaction on the December day that the verdict was announced I wanted to see my family Yet more than two months after his acquittal on charges of supporting terrorism Lemorin remains incarcerated and US U.S. LS immigration officials are moving to deport him to Haiti which he left more than 20 years ago Officials are asking an administrative judge to order his deportation based on the same charges that the jury dismissed The governments government's effort to punish Lemorin despite the acquittal is drawing fire from his attorneys and some legal observers as an attempt a to seek retribution an i in n a profile high-profile case that F prosecutors lost after a fair Ft t trial rial Even the jury foreman who said he had been willing to convict some of L Lemorin's defendants co-defendants said the move to deport Lemorin seems unfair Its kind of outrageous that the guy was cleared after we spent three months at trial and now they're continuing to go after him said Jeff Agron 46 an educator getting a second bite at the apple It doesn't make a whole lot lotof lotof lotof of sense Caught in the middle is Lemorin a father of two a Haitian immigrant who came here as a child and is isa isa isa a permanent legal resident t of the United States Its not just double jeopardy its it's sour sou r grapes said Lemorin's Lemorin s criminal defense attorney Joel DeFabio Its a mind min d set at the Department o of f Justice We dont don't lose and if we can get you u another way we will Barbara Gonzalez a spokeswoman for US U.S. Immigration and Customs Custom s Enforcement said Lemorin Lemor ur will get due process Legally there is nothing to bar the government from pursuing immigration sanctions against Lemorin experts said though such action is rare after an acquittal The immigration charges are a civil matter and a judge will apply a less strict standard of evidence to the charges that were brought at the criminal trial This is one of those unfortunate instances where common sense and constitutional law diverge said Stephen a law professor at American University who has followed the case David A. A Martin a University of Virginia law professor who served as general counsel at atthe atthe atthe the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the late said that the government is perfectly within its legal rights to go ahead in two different even after they've lost in one He added Whether its it's a sound use of prosecutorial authority is a much tougher question Martin said being removed from ones one's adopted country though it itis itis itis is a civil penalty can seem little different from some of the criminal sanctions Lemorin has so far eluded Obviously for someone who's had a green card and could spend the rest of their lives here deportation feels the same as a criminal sentence he said Hes no more a Haitian than the Good Humor man said Charles Kuck a lawyer representing Lemorin in immigration court Lemorin and his six codefendants codefendants codefendants co- co defendants were arrested in June 2006 in a case that Just Justice ce Department officials said demonstrated the threat of homegrown terrorism All of the men had been affiliated with a fringe religious group the Moorish Science Temple a sect that combines elements of Christianity Islam and Judaism They operated out of a ramshackle building in Liberty City one of this city's poorest neighborhoods Their leader Batiste known as Prince Manna proselytized on street corners comers sometimes carrying a staff and wearing a white turban It was on our spiritual journey that we got involved with said Lemorin's wife Charlene He was just another way of learning the Bible and the Quran We Ve always read interesting books From the immigration detention center in Georgia Georgiathis this month Lemorin described himself as a Christian not an Islamic fundamentalist I pray every night that's one of the main things that helps me he said by phone Theres a great God out there During the investigation t two wo confidential informants working with the FBI posed to Batiste that they had al- al connections To one of the informants Batiste outlined a farfetched farfetched farfetched far far- fetched plan to topple the Sears Tower and create a tsunami in Lake Michigan a scheme he would later describe at trial as a way of eliciting contributions from al The primary piece of evidence against Lemorin is videotape showing one of the informants leading him and his defendants co-defendants in an oath of allegiance to al He said he was misled about what was going onI onI onI on I regret that I went along with taking the so- so called oath Lemorin said from Georgia It was right after that I left He stopped going to the groups group's meetings He and Charlene moved to Atlanta where they took jobs at an Abercrombie and Fitch at a mall He kind of distanced himself from the group noted Agron the jury foreman it was a kay koy factor in the decision to acquit him Roughly two months after he and his wife left Miami however Lemorin was arrested Months later Charlene gave birth prematurely to his third child but the baby died Charlene now has kidney disease and is awaiting a transplant The children wonder whether they will ever see their father again she said It just doesn't seem right Asked about the most difficult part of his incarceration Lemorin said I just feel like I should be there for my family They've been going through a lot |