Morning After: Assessing the Effect of Major Terrorism Events on Prosecution Strategies and Outcomes

• NCJ Number: 218570
• Journal: Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 23 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2007 Pages: 174-194
• Author(s): Kelly R. Damphousse; Chris Shields
• Date Published: May 2007
• Length: 21 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study assessed the impact of two major terrorism events--the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11 attacks--using data from both before and after the events.

Abstract

Substantive changes occurred in the charging patterns of prosecutors following the two attacks. Specifically, new offense categories not previously used were used to prosecute terrorists: general crimes, firearms offenses, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, perjury, racketeering, robbery, and stolen property. The Federal Government failed to bring charges related to acts of treason, sedition, or subversive activities in the 2 years following the Oklahoma City bombing. Findings from the September 11th attacks revealed that prosecutors were more likely to charge single offenders for acts that resulted in relatively short sentences when compared to the 2 years prior to the attack. Terrorist defendants seemed to respond by acting more like traditional defendants and a relatively low percentage were convicted based on a guilty plea. The findings suggest that prosecutors who were interested in obtaining quick convictions relied on conventional prosecution strategies to simplify their cases. Data were drawn from the American Terrorism Study, which contains the demographic information and sentencing data for each suspect tried in a Federal district court in the United States for terrorism-related acts. Cases under analysis for this study occurred between 1993 and 1997 (2 years before and after the Oklahoma City bombing) and from 1999 through 2003 (2 years before and after the September 11th attacks). The resulting dataset included 123 indictments against 285 individuals. Main variables under analysis were date of indictment, sentence length, prosecutorial strategy, number of counts per indictee, and trial conviction. Variables were coded and statistically analyzed. Future research should focus on the impact of the first World Trade Center attack with a focus on whether the impact of this attack masked the some of the effects of the Oklahoma City bombing. Tables, notes, references