The Exoneration of Our Client Ali Sadr
Egregious Brady violations revealed post-trial lead to a vacated verdict and dismissal with prejudice in United States v. Sadr, where the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York determined 'it would not be in the interests of justice to further prosecute this case.'
July 24, 2020 at 10:04 AM
12 minute read
Something extraordinary happened this summer. The vaunted U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York moved to dismiss the Iran sanctions criminal prosecution of our client Ali Sadr, after obtaining a guilty verdict, on the grounds that "it would not be in the interests of justice to further prosecute this case." This stunning development came after prosecutors pursued Sadr for more than six years. They executed search warrants on his email accounts and those of his family members. They charged him in a six-count indictment, arrested him with no prior notice of the investigation, and zealously fought for his pretrial detention, imprisoning him for three months before his release. No less than 14 prosecutors played a role in the case. The trial was marred by the mid-trial disclosure of exculpatory evidence undercutting the government's theory of the case, which the prosecutors had improperly suppressed.
However, the court declined to dismiss the case, and the jury ultimately returned a guilty verdict on five of six counts after a hard-fought trial at which Sadr testified in his own defense. The government immediately sought to revoke Sadr's bond, which the court fortunately denied. Then nearly three months after trial, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York notified the court that the prosecutors were dropping the case.
On July 17, 2020, Judge Alison Nathan entered an order—much like the dismissal order in the Senator Ted Stevens case—vacating the unlawfully obtained verdict as null and void, granting a new trial, and then dismissing the indictment with prejudice, with no possibility of appeal or retrial. So how did the government's case unravel so quickly?
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