In a sentencing hearing that got underway three hours after the verdict, a Bay Area forensic psychiatrist and former UC San Francisco School of Medicine professor testified about Hamdan's bleak early life, which she said made him vulnerable to Al Qaeda recruiters.
Emily Keram told the court that Hamdan had been deeply shaken by video images of the Sept. 11 attacks shown at the trial. It was the first footage of the attacks he had seen, as he was in remote southern Afghanistan in September 2001 and was captured a little more than two months later.
"It's hard on my soul," Keram quoted Hamdan as saying.
She described the defendant's rehabilitation potential as "excellent."
Allred barred the prosecution from calling an FBI agent to testify about the horrors and injuries he encountered while on duty in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. The judge told Justice Department lawyer John Murphy that Hamdan "was such a small player" that it would be prejudicial to link him directly to that "horrific" day.
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Appeals process
Under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the law empowering the tribunal to try terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo, the government cannot appeal the acquittals.
The convictions will be automatically appealed to a Court of Military Commissions Review, and defense lawyers can also appeal to a federal appellate court in Washington.
Murphy, lead prosecutor on the Hamdan case, had cast the defendant as a willing and eager accomplice of Bin Laden who shared the Al Qaeda leader's extremist ideology.
"It is highly significant that this panel, hearing this evidence, rejected such an aggressive extension of conspiracy doctrine," said McMillan, a Seattle attorney volunteering on Hamdan's defense team.
The split verdict suggested that the jurors heeded Allred's instructions Monday that in the war theater of Afghanistan, a combatant attack on invading U.S. forces did not constitute a war crime. Prosecutors had argued that two SA-7 missiles found in Hamdan's possession when he was arrested could only have been intended for use against U.S. warplanes.
It was unclear whether the jury's decisions were unanimous: Military commissions, as the trials are called, require a two-thirds majority for conviction, and votes are secret.
Hamdan's military lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, heralded Allred's consolidation of the convictions on the multiple "specifications," or counts. Analysts said it now would be easier for the jury to impose a lesser sentence than the maximum allowed, life in prison.
