Butler v. United States
| Decision Date | 23 July 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 82-314.,No. 82-1387.,No. 82-323.,82-323.,82-1387.,82-314. |
| Citation | 481 A.2d 431 |
| Parties | Horace Anthony BUTLER, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee. Ali ABDUL-MANI, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee. |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
David Adam Reiser, Washington, D.C., with whom Michael S. Spearman, Washington, D.C., appointed by the court, was on the brief for appellant Butler.
James Klein, Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C., with whom A. Franklin Burgess, Jr., Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C., at the time the brief was filed, and Scott Howe, Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C., were on the brief for appellant Abdul-Mani. Linda Jacobson, Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C., also entered an appearance for appellant Abdul-Mani.
Mary Ellen Abrecht, Asst. U.S. Atty., Washington, D.C., with whom Stanley S. Harris, U.S. Atty., Washington, D.C., at the time the brief was filed, Michael W. Farrell, Judith Hetherton, and Harold L. Cushenberry, Jr., Asst. U.S. Attys., Washington, D.C., were on the brief for appellee.
Before NEWMAN, Chief Judge, and FERREN, and PRYOR, Associate Judges.
This case involves events surrounding the highly publicized July 1980 assassination of Ali Akbar Tabatabai. Appellants Horace Butler and Ali Abdul-Mani were convicted as accessories after the fact to first-degree murder. Butler was also convicted of grand larceny and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. In addition, Abdul-Mani was convicted of two counts of perjury.1
Tabatabai was an outspoken opponent of the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Tabatabai worked in the Shah's government before the Iranian revolution. In 1979 he founded and became president of the Iran Freedom Foundation, a corporation chartered in the state of Maryland. He often criticized Khomeini's rule in press releases and television appearances here in the United States. With others, Tabatabai had planned an anti-Khomeini demonstration in Washington, D.C. for the week of July 20 to 27, 1980. He was murdered on July 22, 1980 at his residence in Bethesda, Maryland.
David Belfield — a pro-Khomeini, armed security guard at the Iranian Interests Section of the Algerian Embassy — had received an assignment to assassinate Ali Akbar Tabatabai and other opponents of Khomeini.
Al Fletcher Hunter, an accomplice who testified for the government after a grant of immunity, came to know Belfield through martial arts training and first heard of the assassination plan in mid-June 1980, when Belfield showed him pictures of Ali Akbar Tabatabai and other opponents of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Having already committed a number of crimes for the benefit of the Islamic revolution and for his own financial benefit, Hunter became a willing participant in the assassination plan as well. Hunter testified that he went to the Library of Congress in a vain effort to gather information about Tabatabai, and several times he drove with Belfield to the Bethesda, Maryland, neighborhood where Tabatabai lived. According to the plan, the assassin was to pose as a postman and needed a getaway car. Hunter made inquiries about procedures for renting a car for a week and told Belfield, who had thousands of dollars in $100 bills, that they would need a credit card to rent a car. Hunter testified that Belfield assured him that he knew someone with a credit card and would take care of it.
Meanwhile, Belfield pursued other aspects of the assassination plan. On July 20, 1980, Belfield visited a postman acquaintance, Tyrone Frazier, and discussed procedures for delivery of certified and registered packages for receipt of addressee only. Belfield pressured Frazier to agree to lend him his postal jeep so that he could make a delivery. Belfield assured Frazier that he could make the taking of the jeep appear to be forced. He left Frazier two $100 bills, instructions to meet him at the northwest intersection of Idaho Avenue and Woodley Road the next day and instructions on how to receive $300 more when the job was done.
On July 21, Abdul-Mani tried to rent a car with his Central Charge card. Because he already owed $550 and had a credit limit of $600, Central Charge would not approve the $300 charge required by Budget Rent-A-Car, or the $225 charge required by National Car Rental unless a cash payment was made to lower the debt. Soon thereafter, $225 in cash was paid on Abdul-Mani's Central Charge account at 1215 E Street, N.W.2 Then Abdul-Mani successfully used his Central Charge card to rent a blue Toyota from National Car Rental at 1001 12th Street, N.W.
Testimony at trial indicated that Abdul-Mani was known throughout his community as a peaceful man. He was married, employed and the father of six children at the time of indictment. He had never been arrested.
Abdul-Mani attended services at the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Avenue, where almost every local Moslem worships. At the mosque he met David Belfield, a fairly well-known person in that community. A close friendship never developed, yet Belfield, like others, found that if he came to Abdul-Mani needing a loan, he would get it. He repaid borrowed money and on occasion successfully asked Abdul-Mani for the use of his car. Abdul-Mani was known for his generosity and willingness to help others in the community.
Hunter's testimony outlined the sequence of events leading to the assassination. He testified that Belfield did not meet Frazier's postal jeep on the 21st. However later that evening Hunter and Belfield rode together in the newly rented car to the Tabatabai residence. Although Hunter went to the door with Belfield's nine millimeter pistol in hand, no one answered the doorbell. They drove away. Belfield called Frazier that night to advise him that he would meet him and take the postal jeep the next day.
Between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, July 22, 1980, Belfield picked up Hunter in the rental vehicle. Hunter drove. Belfield told him to go to Butler's apartment. They drove into the parking lot at the rear of 738 Longfellow Street and blew the car horn. Butler first appeared at the window and then came downstairs to admit them through a rear door.3 While inside Butler's apartment, Belfield put on a postal uniform. He also had with him a light blue pith helmet, two envelopes and the gun. Belfield asked Hunter to go outside and drive the rental car around to the front of the building. Hunter did so. Belfield, dressed in the postal uniform, came out of the apartment building, got into the car and directed Hunter to drive to the area where Massachusetts Avenue, 39th Street, and Idaho Avenue meet. When Hunter arrived there, he saw Butler drive up in his blue truck and then saw Frazier appear with the postal jeep. They all drove to Woodley Road where Belfield, with his envelopes and gun, got out and directed Frazier out of his jeep and into Butler's truck. Belfield held one hand on the gun inside one of the envelopes and acted in a manner that would make an uninformed outlooker believe that the postman was being forced into Butler's truck. Butler drove Frazier toward Baltimore. Belfield drove the postal jeep toward Tabatabai's house with Hunter close behind in the rental car. After Hunter and Belfield stopped for Belfield to make a telephone call, Hunter parked in the cul de sac close to the Tabatabai residence and Belfield continued on to the house.
Shortly before noon that day, Seyed Mortazavi answered the door of the Tabatabai home and confronted a man whom he presumed to be a mailman because he was wearing a postal uniform and blue helmet and was carrying a large manila envelope addressed to Tabatabai. The man insisted that Tabatabai had to sign for the delivery of mail personally. When Tabatabai himself approached the door and began to bend over to look at the package, he was shot repeatedly. The gunshot wounds caused his death almost immediately.4 Mortazavi shut the door and called for help.
Belfield drove the postal jeep back to the cul de sac where Hunter waited in the rental car. Belfield abandoned the postal jeep and rode back to Butler's apartment with Hunter. According to Hunter's testimony, once inside the apartment Belfield put his gun in a box and left it in one of the rooms. He wrote numbers he took from a book on sheets of paper and called for information about flights from La Guardia Airport to Geneva, Switzerland. At 12:19 p.m., Trans World Airlines recorded Belfield's reservation for a 7:30 p.m. flight to Paris from the John F. Kennedy International Airport.5 Belfield left the postal uniform and the helmet in the apartment. Telling Hunter that Butler would get rid of the gun for him, Hunter testified that Belfield left a note and a $100 bill tacked on Butler's wall and threw the rest of the note paper in the trash.6
When Belfield and Hunter left Butler's apartment, they threw the manila envelopes away in neighborhood trash cans and drove to the Muslim House at 5714 16th Street, N.W., where Belfield packed some personal belongings. Then they drove in the rental car to New York.
Meanwhile Butler, in his own truck, drove postman Frazier around Baltimore and eventually returned him to the Washington area, letting him out in Wheaton. Frazier called his postal supervisor from Sligo Junior High School and soon thereafter was met there by postal authorities and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. He first told them he had been kidnapped by two white men. Once confronted by the fact that his postal jeep had been used in an assassination, he told the truth. Although he had known all along that it was illegal for him to lend his jeep, he had assumed that the worst activity it might have been used for was a drug delivery. He wanted no part in covering up a murder.7 The FBI began looking for Belfield and Butler.
By then Belfield had decided to avoid possible apprehension at a New York airport by...
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