“In his filing, Daoud’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin called the Alford plea appropriate because Daoud acknowledged the strength of the evidence against him but also maintained ‘credible’ claims of entrapment.”
Meanwhile, Daoud spoke about wanting to maximize the carnage: “If it’s only like five, 10 people, I’m not gonna feel that good. I wanted something that’s … massive. I want something that’s gonna make it in the news like tonight.”
And he was arrested after “punching the trigger of a fake car bomb.”
What would it take for you to punch the trigger of what you thought was a car bomb? Would you do it for love? For money? For religious fervor?
Clearly Adel Daoud wanted to do what he tried to do. Entrapment claims are a refuge of scoundrels.
“Suburban man facing trial over terrorism bomb plot wants to enter unusual guilty plea,” by Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune, November 14, 2018:
Two weeks before his long-awaited trial, a Hillside man has asked a federal judge to allow him to enter an unusual guilty plea to charges alleging he tried to detonate a bomb outside a Loop bar in 2012 and then solicited the murder of the undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the sting against him.
Lawyers for Adel Daoud, now 25, asked U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in a court filing Wednesday to enter what’s known as an Alford plea in which he’d acknowledge prosecutors had evidence to convict him but not admit wrongdoing….
In addition to the terrorism conspiracy and solicitation of murder charges, Daoud’s lawyers also want him to plead guilty at the same time to a third charge alleging Daoud attacked an inmate with a shank while awaiting trial at the Metropolitan Correction Center, a federal Loop jail.
If she approves the plea deal, Coleman would sentence Daoud on the combined three cases. The judge has often struck a sympathetic tone with Daoud, who was a teenager when he was first charged in 2012, and sided with his attorneys in finding him mentally unfit for trial two years ago.
In his filing, Daoud’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin called the Alford plea appropriate because Daoud acknowledged the strength of the evidence against him but also maintained “credible” claims of entrapment.
“Still, given the very nature of the terrorism charges and the extensive evidence that will be marshaled against him, (he) understands the likelihood of a guilty verdict — notwithstanding his defenses and protestations of innocence,” Durkin said.
A guilty plea would scuttle what promised to be a sensational trial set to get underway Nov. 26. Coleman had previously ruled that the undercover FBI agent who posed as a terrorist online and provided Daoud with the fake bomb could testify from behind a screen. Other witnesses were expected to testify in disguise.
Daoud was 17 when he came under FBI scrutiny in 2011 after posting messages online about killing Americans, according to court records.
FBI analysts posing as terrorists exchanged messages with Daoud and eventually got him to meet with the undercover agent, who was described as a “cousin” interested in waging jihad, according to the charges. Over several months, Daoud and the agent met several times in the Chicago area to discuss potential targets for an attack, the charges allege.
In one meeting in Villa Park in August 2012, Daoud allegedly told the agent he wanted to maximize the carnage so he would feel like he “accomplished something.”
“If it’s only like five, 10 people, I’m not gonna feel that good,” the charges quoted Daoud as saying. “I wanted something that’s … massive. I want something that’s gonna make it in the news like tonight.”
The FBI arrested Daoud in September 2012 as he stood in a Loop alley, moments after punching the trigger of a fake car bomb, authorities said.
Coleman’s ruling that Daoud was mentally unfit came after he made bizarre statements accusing the judge, prosecutors and even his own attorneys of being members of a secret society known as the Illuminati. He also called Coleman a reptilian overlord and claimed that he was being targeted as a Muslim….
Daoud spent months at a psychiatric facility in North Carolina before being declared rehabilitated. In March, both sides agreed he was stable enough to go to trial as long as he remained on his prescribed psychotropic medications.