A U.S. appeals court on April 1 upheld the convictions of leaders of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. had told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that there was not sufficient evidence to convict them of charges of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.
“The jury saw and heard a host of video and audio recordings of defendants promising violence, planning and participating in trainings, bringing their own weapons and material, and plotting the abduction without reluctance,” the per curiam ruling stated.
The panel consisted of U.S. Circuit Judges Joan L. Larsen, Chad A. Readler, and Stephanie Dawkins Davis.
In Fox’s appeal, his lawyer had said that “Fox’s defense was he was entrapped and not otherwise predisposed to violate the law,” but that U.S. District Judge Robert J. Jonker erroneously barred the admission of messages exchanged between an informant and the informant’s FBI handler, and limited the informant’s statements, undermining the defense.
The appeals court said that Jonker, who was overseeing the trials, did err in limiting the informant’s statements.
The judge cited two rulings in rationalizing his decision, but “no such limitation” can be found in either case, the Sixth Circuit panel said.
The error was harmless, though, according to the ruling, because the defendants “had other avenues available to them to support their entrapment defense and chose not to use them.” The panel said evidence of entrapment that was put forth was weak and that government lawyers “sufficiently demonstrated that the jury’s verdict was not ’substantially swayed' by the district court’s error.”
Lawyers for Fox and Croft had also said that the judge wrongly declined to let them question an allegedly biased juror and limited their time for cross-examination of another man charged in the plot.
The appeals court said that the judge did not err by failing to hold a hearing in which lawyers could question the juror because the evidence of bias was not credible. The circuit judges also said that the judge’s time limits on cross-examination were not arbitrary and were aligned with the power judges hold.
“Very disappointed with the court’s finding that the evidentiary error made by the district court excluding informants’ statements was found to be harmless,” Steven Nolder, an attorney representing Fox, told The Epoch Times in an email.
A lawyer representing Croft did not return a request for comment.
