New Judge Assigned to 9/11 Case Ahead of 24th Anniversary of Attacks
Lt. Col. Michael Schrama is the fifth judge in the case against five men who are accused of conspiring in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The case has been stuck in pretrial hearings since 2012.
Prosecutors made a deal last summer with three of the defendants, including the man accused of being the mastermind of the plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences. That would have averted their death-penalty trial.But the agreement has been revoked twice, including this month by an appeals court in Washington, potentially returning the case to the question of whether the defendants' torture from 2002 to 2006 while they were in C.I.A. detention has rendered their confessions inadmissible.
Colonel Schrama was assigned to the case on Wednesday. Prosecutors have indicated that they would like to see him on the bench the week of Sept. 1 for an examination of his qualifications.
If no disqualifying conflicts emerge, it will be Colonel Schrama's job to manage the pretrial proceedings at a time when the case has splintered into three parts.
Mr. Mohammed and two other defendants who had the plea deal are in one camp. The previous judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall, had ruled that their pretrial agreements were valid contracts before he retired in May. Their lawyers are preparing an appeal to seek the deals' reinstatement, and have shunned any case-moving litigation at the Guantánamo court as a potential breach of the contract.
Another defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was found mentally incompetent to go to trial and his case was severed. Prosecutors have asked the court to revisit that question.The fifth defendant, Ammar al Baluchi, was litigating on a separate track. The last judge wrapped up his four years on the case by suppressing Mr. Baluchi's interrogations by the F.B.I. at Guantánamo in 2007 as having been obtained through his C.I.A. torture. Prosecutors are seeking to reinstate his confessions.
Colonel Schrama, who is in his 40s, graduated from Roger Williams University School of Law in 2008, around the time the defendants were first brought to court. He then joined in the Air Force and has served as a military prosecutor and defense counsel on appeal cases.
This is his second stint as a military judge. He handled court-martial cases at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia from 2021 to 2023, and returned to the bench last month.
Colonel Schrama was an English student at Georgetown University and a starting defensive end on the school's football team at the time of the attacks. Before he went to law school, he taught high school English in New York.His online personal and professional biography said he suffered a 'season-ending injury' in his third year at Georgetown.
According to his Air Force biography, he has specialized in environmental law while serving in the military. He also earned a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, possibly from a nine-month stint as the staff attorney for an air wing in Kuwait in 2019.
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