Justice Deborah Kaplan
Al Fawwaz and Abdel Bary were indicted for conspiring to kill Americans in connection with the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The government plans a joint trial. Al Fawwaz is charged only in four conspiracy counts, while Abdel Bary is charged in those counts plus 279 substantive counts, including murder. District court denied Al Fawwaz severance under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 14(a). He did not show prejudice by the evidence against Abdel Bary. The evidence underlying the indictment's substantive counts was likely to be admissible against Al Fawwaz. The 1998 bombings allegedly were overt acts in furtherance of the three conspiracies in which Al Fawwaz was charged, and the specific object of the fourth. Nor did joint trial—estimated to take three months—implicate the concerns highlighted in United States v. Casamiento, which took 17 months and involved 21 defendants. The court observed that the trial of another alleged Embassy bombing plot conspirator took less than two months despite the fact that the defendant therein was charged in 286 counts. Thus Al Fawwaz failed to show that a joint trial would compromise a specific trial right or prevent the jury from making reliable decisions.
