United States v. Pirouz Sedaghaty

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 11-30342 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v. 6:05-cr-60008-

HO-

PIROUZ SEDAGHATY,

Defendant-Appellant. OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon Michael R. Hogan, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted December 3, 2012—Seattle, Washington

Filed August 23, 2013

Before: Mary M. Schroeder, M. Margaret McKeown, and Richard C. Tallman, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge McKeown; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Tallman SUMMARY*

Criminal Law

The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part a criminal judgment and remanded for a new trial in a tax fraud case – that involved significant amounts of classified materials and in camera, ex parte reviews as well as classified proceedings – stemming from charges that the defendant falsified a 2000 charitable organization tax return in order to conceal his support of an independence movement in Chechnya.

The panel was not persuaded by the defendant’s arguments regarding the classified material,…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

This is a tax fraud case arising from a false declaration on a charitable organization’s tax return claiming a donation was used to purchase a mosque in Missouri when it was actually sent to terrorists in Chechnya. The conviction and sentence imposed on Pirouz Sedaghaty, also known as Pete Seda, should be affirmed. To the extent my colleagues wish to reverse the district court’s rulings and remand this case for a new trial, I respectfully dissent.

Overall, the majority’s opinion fails to take into account the exemplary manner in which a seasoned trial judge handled this case to ensure that the defendant received a fair trial, despite its substantive and logistical challenges. There are several critical flaws in the majority’s analysis. First, and in contravention of the deference we owe the jury’s verdict, the opinion’s recitation of the facts is inappropriately written from the perspective of the defense theory of the case. Second, the majority unduly constricts the text of the search warrant and disregards the underlying reason for the very existence of the exclusionary rule in declaring the search unlawful. Third, the opinion…

Opinion by Judge McKEOWN; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge TALLMAN.

OPINION

This is a tax fraud case that was transformed into a trial on terrorism. The case stems from charges that Pirouz Sedaghaty (known as Pete Seda) falsified a 2000 charitable organization tax return in order to conceal his support of an independence movement in Chechnya, a republic in the Caucasus mountains of southern Russia. Seda founded the U.S. branch of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc. (“Al-Haramain”), a Saudi Arabian charity that the U.S. government suspected of funding terrorist activities and supporting the Chechen mujahideen (holy warriors engaged in violent jihad against Russian forces) under the guise of humanitarian aid. 1 , Seda’s defense was based on his claim that any discrepancy on the tax return could be traced to his accountant, as well as on his long history of peaceful engagement on behalf of Islam and his track record of charitable work in the United States and abroad.

The appeal illustrates the fine line between the government’s use of relevant evidence to document motive for a cover up and its use of inflammatory, unrelated evidence about Osama Bin-Laden and…