US judge vacates terror suspect’s conviction

A U.S. judge vacated the conviction and sentence of a terrorism suspect imprisoned for 14 years.

Senior U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. issued the order Tuesday. This came six months after U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes recommended Hamid Hayat be freed due to inadequate representation.

The Lodi man, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, was arrested in 2005 and subsequently convicted of attending terrorist camps in Pakistan and then returning to the U.S. with the intent of carrying out an attack. Hayat's counsel in the original case was inexperienced and did not present the testimony of witnesses in Pakistan.

Those witnesses testified during a multi-day evidentiary hearing last year that Hayat spent his time in the Pakistan with family far from the camps.

Burrell's ruling cited factors including doubts about the government's case expressed by two jurors, the government's use of a questionable informant and conflicts of interest on Hayat's original legal team. It also cited evidence of Hayat's diminished mental capacity following an illness that may have contributed to incriminating statements he made to law enforcement agents.

Hayat's team, lead by attorneys with Riordan & Horgan in San Francisco, said in a news release they will "seek Mr. Hayat's immediate release from his incarceration at FCI Stafford, Arizona."

-- Malcolm Maclachlan