Miscarriage Of Justice – Part II

Yesterday, I started telling the story of Dr. Massoud Amin – a man who came to the US as a teenager with his parents after the Iranian Revolution, became a citizen, and rose to the highest levels not only of academia, but of national security, as one of the nation’s foremost experts in cybersecurity.

And then, in the middle of a rancorous divorce with more than a whiff of academic backstabbing mixed in, an overzealous prosecutor turned a paperwork discrepancy in a civil divorce filing into, literally, a criminal case.

Pursuant to that case, the prosecutor and the police searched Dr. Amin’s house, and confiscated Dr. Amin’s firearm collection,  planting the story of “The Iranian professor who collected a bunch of guns and swindled his soon-to-be-ex” – simultaneously defaming him to the left (“Serves the gun nut right!”) and the less-bright parts of the right (“Probably a terrorist!”).

The trial?  It was a comedy of errors – but not remotely funny.   All exculpatory evidence was suppressed, and that was just the beginning.   The ending?   A conviction – aided  by bizarre courtroom antics and some sketchy lawyering on both sides.

The prosecution is asking for a ten year prison sentence for a conviction that normally carries a years’ suspended sentence and probation for a first-time offender – which Dr. Amin, who held a top-secret security clearance until the conviction, most assuredly was.

Why so much irregularity in what started as a typical ugly American divorce?

We’ll be talking with Dr. Massoud about that this Saturday on my show.   Tune in, and call in if you havre questions.

12 thoughts on “Miscarriage Of Justice – Part II

  1. Interesting case.

    If doctored financial statements were introduced into the divorce proceedings, its not a mere ‘paperwork discrepancy’. Hard to explain why the county prosecutorial apparatus ought not take an interest in that.

  2. Two questions:

    1. When was he charged with a felony?

    2. When Can they prove he knew it?

  3. If doctored financial statements were introduced into the divorce proceedings, its not a mere ‘paperwork discrepancy’

    Oh, that’l come up on Saturday.

    1. When was he charged with a felony?

    Can’t recall. Don’t mean to Evayoung, but Ill make sure to ask Saturday.

    2. When Can they prove he knew it?

    Now, that I DO know the answer to. He not only knew about the discrepancy, but sent the correction to his ex’s divorce counsel.

    That fact was apparently suppressed at trial.

  4. He not only knew about the discrepancy, but sent the correction to his ex’s divorce counsel.

    No law talker here, but if it had been me, I’d have sent it to the court. And if I knew there was a felony charge, discrepancy or not, I wouldn’t have made a firearm purchase until I had the corrected docs in hand.

    He may have saved a few bucks at the clearance sale, but I bet he spent a whole bunch more for lawyerin’.

    Also, why did he plead? If what you have here is correct, it seems ripe for an appeal.

    There’s a lot of people out there looking for an excuse to take firearms away; I’m not fixin to ever give them one.

  5. I tend to agree with Swiftee about waiting to purchase until you get a charge cleared, even if it is a nonsense charge, but it strikes me as well that if the law is so complicated that a PhD professor needs to get lawyers to understand basic implications, the law is also too darned complicated.

    One thing that may result in the “suppression” not really being suppression is that the form to purchase doesn’t seem to make an exception for felony investigations where the accused knows the investigation will end soon. It simply asks about felony investigations, so if he knew he was being investigated, he did technically lie there.

    That brings probably the biggest question of the matter; why would perjury regarding a federal firearms form be a county matter to begin with? Do they even have jurisdiction? There is something really amiss with that, especially given that for the years 2009-2016, there seems to have been something of a “lapse” in enforcement of federal firearms laws, most famously around Chicago, which of course would have benefited most from their enforcement.

  6. He did not plead on the divorce “swindle”. He lost his trial.

    The county gun charges were diverted provided he sold the 14 handguns and made a $500 court fee…. This is very curious, that an urban prosecutorial apparatus would allow a firearms offender of sorts dispose of his collection on the secondary market.

  7. Does that mean he will be a prohibited person in the future, John?

    Because if it does, I’d fight it.

    Keeping in mind, of course, that I’d never actually own a ((shiver)) gun in the first place.

    Those things scare the hell out of me, but it’s the principle.

  8. Looking back at the Strib articles, it strikes me that the charges of falsifying/forgery in those financial statements really hinge not on whether he retracted them later, but rather whether they were falsified in the first place.

    Along those lines, if my retirement accounts somehow became the object of legal interest, I don’t precisely see how I would falsify them. I would give a copy of my account statements with the dates clearly on them, and then I’m done. How do I falsify that? Am I just not being clever enough here–maybe use some advanced Adobe application and put the wrong text that would not work with the graphics?

    Obviously the jury was satisfied with the evidence, since it took them just 7 hours to deliver a verdict, but something isn’t making sense here. Maybe I’m just not corrupt enough.

  9. How does one falsify documents like this? The instinct is to think he manually cut and pasted some new values onto an old statement and copy machined them.

    That’s not a ‘discrepancy’

  10. It wouldn’t be, and how would somebody think he could get away with it, and why on earth would his lawyer allow him to submit such documents? Was Dan Rather counseling him or something for those “layers and layers of fact checkers” or something like that?

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