For the past three years, a 24-year-old construction worker named Edgar Morales has been in jail, awaiting trial on murder and terrorism charges that could send him to prison for life. Morales, however, does not belong to al-Qaeda or Hamas.
Instead, prosecutors say, he is a member of the St. James Boys, a group of recreational soccer players who formed a street gang that in effect terrorized the Mexican and Mexican-American population of the west Bronx for several years, and killed a 10-year-old girl in 2002.
When the case -- which is making its way through state Supreme Court in the Bronx -- comes to trial this summer, Morales will be the first person tried under the state's 2001 anti-terrorism statute. His case is being monitored by both conservative and liberal legal groups to see how the apparently novel use of the statute plays out, with some raising concerns.
"In our system, we balance two concerns: security and liberty," said Ronald Rotunda, a professor at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "When laws are used in ways in which they are not intended, the balance is broken."
The Bronx district attorney, Robert Johnson, says the law is an apt tool in his effort to prosecute violent street gangs.
"The obvious need of this statute is to protect society against acts of political terror," Johnson said in a statement. "However, the terror perpetrated by gangs, which all too often occurs on the streets of New York, also fits squarely within the scope of this statute."
At least 36 states approved anti-terrorism laws in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11 attacks; in Virginia, prosecutors used that state's anti-terror law to get a verdict of death against John Muhammad, who was convicted of masterminding 16 sniper shootings in the Washington area in 2002 that killed 10 people.
When the New York statute was passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Governor George Pataki within six days of Sept. 11, many of the lawmakers who voted for the bill believed it would never be used, given that prosecuting terror suspects had traditionally been the domain of the federal government.
"It was meant to deal with terrorism," said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat who voted for the bill. "We were talking about Osama bin Laden, not gang members."
State Senator Michael Balboni, the Long Island Republican who sponsored the legislation, said he had envisioned "mass effect" cases of terrorism like the World Trade Center attack and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 when he submitted the bill.
Johnson's use of the legislation, he said, was an "unanticipated application."
Balboni declined to say whether he supported the use of the law in Johnson's prosecution.
"His is a literal interpretation of the statute," Balboni said. "We'll write the laws, and it's up to the prosecutor to apply the law and for a jury to decide."
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