U.S. v. Damrah, No. 1:03-CR-484.

• Decision Date: 13 September 2004
• Docket Number: No. 1:03-CR-484.
• Citation: 334 F.Supp.2d 967
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Fawaz Mohammed DAMRAH, aka Fawaz Damra Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

Page 967

334 F.Supp.2d 967

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Fawaz Mohammed DAMRAH, aka Fawaz Damra Defendant.

No. 1:03-CR-484.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division.

September 13, 2004.

Cherie L. Krigsman, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, James V. Moroney, Jr., Office of the U.S. Attorney, Cleveland, OH, for Plaintiff.

Larry W. Zukerman, Zukerman, Daiker & Lear, Cleveland, OH, John D. Cline, Jones Day, San Francisco, CA, Nancy Hollander, Freedman, Boyd, Daniels, Hollander, Goldberg & Cline, Albuquerque, NM, Defendant.

AMENDED MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER¹

GWIN, District Judge.

Currently before the Court is Defendant Fawaz Mohammad Damrah's motion for a judgment of acquittal, or in the alternative, for a new trial. This motion follows a jury's verdict, finding Damrah guilty of unlawfully obtaining citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425 by making false statements to Immigration and Naturalization Services officials when he applied for citizenship over a decade ago. For the reasons that follow, the Court DENIES Damrah's motion.

BACKGROUND

Born in 1961 in Nablus — a city located in what is now the West Bank — Fawaz Mohammad Damrah ("Damrah") did not move to the United States until 1984, after he had already graduated from the University of Jordan. That year, he came to Chicago to work as the imam, or Islamic spiritual leader, of a mosque. Two years later, Damrah moved to Brooklyn, New York, to become the imam of the al-Farooq mosque, a mosque with some members who supported a radical version of the Islamic faith. After four years at al-Farooq, Damrah left Brooklyn and moved to Cleveland in 1990.

Since 1991, Damrah has worked as the imam of the largest mosque in the Greater Cleveland area, the Islamic Center of Cleveland. A permanent resident of the United States since 1988, Damrah applied for United States citizenship in 1993. On October 18, 1993, Damrah filled out a Form N-400 — an official government form entitled "Application for Naturalization." The form contained questions regarding Damrah's work history, his family, his affiliations, and various other questions.

On December 17, 1993, Immigration and Naturalization Services² examiner Kim Adams conducted a naturalization interview of Damrah. In that interview, Adams reviewed with Damrah his answers to each question on the Form N-400 to ensure their accuracy and completeness. Additionally, Adams provided Damrah the opportunity to ask any clarifying questions regarding the Form N-400's questions. Adams lacked scripted answers to explain what various terms on the Form N-400 meant. At trial, she testified that when naturalization applicants sought clarification, she did her best to explain the terms to them in a way that they could understand. (Tr. 329, 336). In the end, Damrah did not change the answers to any of the Form N-400's questions during his naturalization interview with Kim Adams. On the basis of Damrah's statements on his Form N-400 and in the interview with Kim Adams, the United States of America granted him naturalization, and he became a citizen on April 29, 1994. Since that time, he has resided in Cleveland and has continued serving as the imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland.

As the imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Damrah gained a local reputation as a leader of the interfaith community who strove to bridge the gaps separating the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. In the wake of the tragedies of 9/11, this role became even more pronounced. However, only months after 9/11, videos depicting a different side of Damrah surfaced. Local news stations aired videos taken in 1991 in which Damrah introduced leaders of Palestinian support organizations, praised attacks against Israelis during the first Intifada, made several apparently anti-Semitic remarks,³ and solicited donations to fund the work of these groups, some of which claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Israel.

On December 16, 2003, a grand jury in the Northern District of Ohio issued an indictment charging Damrah with wrongful procurement of citizenship in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425. After a lengthy pre-trial period, Damrah's trial on these charges commenced on June 15, 2004. Two days later, the trial terminated with a jury verdict of guilty. Damrah now challenges that verdict, moving the Court to grant a judgment of acquittal notwithstanding the verdict, or in the alternative, to order a new trial. The Court considers Damrah's arguments in favor of his motion — as well as the United States' ("Government's") arguments against it.

ANALYSIS

Damrah currently moves for both a motion for a verdict of acquittal under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29, and a motion for a new trial under Federal Rule 33. To simplify its analysis, the Court treats Damrah's motion as two separate motions (one under each Rule), and it addresses each one separately.

I. Rule 29 Motion for a Verdict of Acquittal

A. Standard of Review

In reviewing a motion for a judgment of acquittal notwithstanding a guilty verdict, the Court must view the evidence and draw all inferences in the light most favorable to the Government. United States v. Riffe, 28 F.3d 565, 567 (6th Cir.1994) (citing Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979)). After doing so, it may grant a motion overturning the jury verdict only if no rational juror could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. Because the Government must prove the defendant guilty of each element beyond a reasonable doubt, see In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), this standard of review applies to each element of the offense.

In this case, the Government charged Damrah with a single count of committing a single offense. However, it alleged multiple factual specifications sufficient to constitute that offense. To demonstrate, one of the ways that the Government says Damrah "unlawfully" obtained citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a), is that he made various false statements on his application for naturalization, and that these false statements violate 18 U.S.C. § 1001.⁴ These false statements include

(1) denying that he had ever engaged in the persecution of others because of their religion;

(2), (3), & (4) failing to disclose his membership in three groups;⁵ and/or

(5), (6), & (7) failing to disclose his affiliation with the same three groups.

Additionally, the Government charged that these same allegedly false statements violate 18 U.S.C. § 1015,⁶ and cites this as an alternative theory to support the charged violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a). Finally, the Government alleged that Damrah obtained citizenship when he was not entitled to do so, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(b). Thus, the Government offers at least fifteen different theories (one for each of the seven false statements that allegedly violates § 1001, one for each false statement that allegedly violates § 1015, and one for obtaining citizenship when he was not entitled to do so) in support of the single charged offense. Each of these theories serves as a factual specification upon which the jury may have based its guilty verdict.

A threshold question exists as to whether the Government must demonstrate that it proved Damrah guilty beyond a reasonable doubt not only of each element of the offense, but also of each factual specification sufficient to support the verdict. In other words, the question asks whether to sustain the jury's verdict, the Government must show that it proved the falsity of all seven statements beyond a reasonable doubt, or, rather only the falsity of a single statement. Before addressing the substance of Damrah's motion, the Court focuses on this threshold question.

In Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 112 S.Ct. 466, 116 L.Ed.2d 371 (1991), the United States Supreme Court held that a general guilty verdict on a multiple-object conspiracy charge was valid even if the evidence was inadequate to support conviction as to one of the objects. Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia noted that

It was settled law in England before the Declaration of Independence, and in this country long afterwards, that a general jury verdict was valid so long as it was legally supportable on one of the submitted grounds — even though that gave no assurance that a valid ground, rather than an invalid one, was actually the basis for the jury's action.

Id. at 49, 112 S.Ct. 466.

In its analysis, the Griffin Court distinguished Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1957). In Yates, the Court held that where one of the two charged grounds was insufficient as a matter of law (because it fell outside the applicable statute of limitations) "the proper rule to be applied is that which requires a verdict to be set aside in cases where the verdict is supportable on one ground, but not on another, and it is impossible to tell which ground the jury selected." Id. at 312, 77 S.Ct. 1064. The Griffin Court distinguished Yates by noting that Yates, and the cases upon which it relied, dealt with situations where one of the charged grounds was insufficient at law. Id. at 52-55. In those cases, a jury verdict is not worthy of confidence because "[j]urors are not generally equipped to determine whether a particular theory of conviction submitted to them is contrary to law[.]" Id. at 59, 112 S.Ct. 466. However, in cases like Griffin, where the jury lacked adequate evidence to convict on one of the charged grounds, the jury verdict may stand even after an appellate court determines that one of the multiple charged grounds lacked sufficient evidence to support a conviction. The reason such verdicts may stand is that "jurors are well equipped to analyze the evidence." Id. (citing Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 157, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968)).

From the Supreme Court's analysis in Griffin, then, it seems clear that the...