Jose Padilla Verdict Reached: UPDATE: Guilty On All Counts

The sentence will be read in court this afternoon.

A verdict was reached Thursday in the trial of Jose Padilla and two co-defendants charged with supporting al-Qaida and other violent Islamic extremist groups overseas.

The jury verdict was scheduled to be read at 2 p.m. EDT before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami's downtown federal courthouse, according to an announcement from her chambers. The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about a day and a half following a three-month trial.

Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible life in prison if convicted of all three charges in the case.

The Bush administration portrayed Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, as a committed al-Qaida terrorist and cast his 2002 arrest at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as an important victory in the war against terrorism less than a year after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:
Guilty on all counts. Nice. Let the Left's wailing commence over how the jury disregarded all the bad things the government did, etc.

Of course, the AP report had to throw in the part about how Padilla was an enemy combatant held for 3.5 years before the switch into the standard criminal justice system as if that should somehow make a difference in determining his guilt or innocence of the charges alleged.

Padilla was originally accused of being the dirty bomber, but the government instead opted to go with charges that they believed would be easier to prove in a court of law, including conspiracy to commit murder and providing material support to terrorist groups. That decision appears to have been the correct one. The prosecutors apparently determined that they would have sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Padilla was conspiring to kill Americans with fellow terrorists and the dirty bomb charges would be a distraction.

As it stands, Padilla faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, which carries a penalty of life in prison. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts, which carry potential 15-year sentences each.

Sentencing will take place December 5.

As Michelle Malkin notes, here were the charges that Padilla and his codefendants were facing:

Count 1 - Conspiracy to Murder, Kidnap, and Maim Persons in a Foreign Country as part of a conspiracy to advance violent jihad
Count 2 - Conspiracy to Provide Material Support for Terrorists
Count 3 - Material Support for Terrorists
Counts 4 and 5 are against Hassoun for unlawful possession of a weapon and making a false statement
Counts 6 through 10 are against Hassoun for multiple charges of perjury
Count 11 is against Hassoun for obstruction

Among the evidence provided was what appears to have been Padilla's application to join up with al Qaeda.

However, what should be of interest is the fact that al Qaeda minion Abu Zubaydah had fingered Padilla and knew his whereabouts and intentions. Allah notes:

One of the key points against Padilla all along is that he was fingered by captured al Qaeda big Abu Zubaydah, and turned up in Chicago where Zubaydah said he would on his mission to dirty bomb and blow up Chicago area apartment buildings. That’s circumstantial, but surely damning. If Padilla is innocent, how did Abu Z know where he’d be and when he’d be there?

Sullivan will surely cry that Zubaydah in all likelihood gave up Padilla after being water-boarded. I don’t consider water-boarding torture, and don’t care at all about the health and welfare of an animal like Abu Zubaydah. His head was full of al Qaeda facts, and we needed access to those facts in order to save lives. I see it as the closest thing we’ll get in the real world to the true ticking time-bomb scenario. You had a captured terrorist aggressively interrogated to give up the name and location of another, who was (allegedly) on a terrorist mission at that very moment. No water-boarding of the capture terrorist, and you don’t stop the terrorist who’s still in the field, and innocent people die.

The Left is going through the motions of outrage in the usual locations (DKos, Huffpo, DU, etc.), whining and seething over the conduct and treatment against Padilla, without once noting the possibility that he was indeed guilty as charged.

UPDATE:
Orin Kerr wonders what the legal ramifications of the case will be. He thinks that this suggests that the criminal justice system is robust enough to handle terror cases. I'm not entirely convinced of that fact, even if this case was successfully managed.

Hot Air has a monster roundup. Others blogging this story: Neocon News, Chapomatic, Blog-o-Fascists, Captain's Quarters, Jammie, The Jawa Report, Big Lizards, Macranger, Wake Up America, Stop the ACLU, Ed Driscoll, and Ace.