Few Clear Wins in U.S. Anti-Terror Cases

At the time of the arrests, Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, "As terrorist organizations become more sophisticated, it is critical that we respond using all the law enforcement tools the law provides." They are awaiting trial.

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The Justice Department, U.S. attorneys and the FBI have doggedly pursued individual suspects in these domestic terrorism cases, even when their initial steps are unsuccessful.

In Miami, prosecutors not only sought a retrial after the first hung jury but also went after the one person, Lyglenson Lemorin, whom the jury found not guilty. Instead of turning him loose, they immediately had him detained for possible deportation to his native Haiti on grounds that he had been indicted on a felony charge.

Law enforcement officers say that in deciding when to indict, they weigh whether the targets might flee overseas, whether the cost of surveillance is paying adequate dividends, and whether a group is likely to take actions that could cost human lives.

"There's a risk here that while we're trying to perfect our evidence that something very bad could happen," said Patrick Rowan, acting chief of the Justice Department's National Security Division. "It's certainly the case that there is a value in stopping a plot, even if you aren't 100 percent certain that a conviction is assured."

Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University who studies the government's terrorism cases, said the picture is complicated. "The bottom line is that they are doing considerably better than is often reported . . . but they certainly aren't doing perfectly and they've had plenty of black eyes along the way," Chesney said.

One senior law enforcement official recently said, "We may have been too aggressive at the beginning." He thinks that early cases, such as the one in Miami, were pushed too hard and that the FBI and U.S. attorneys now understand that getting a full picture of potential threats by groups is as important as making cases.

J. Wells Dixon, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the Miami case is among the "few and far between" disappointments in the government's aggressive campaign to attack the sources and funding of possible terrorist groups. These outliers, Dixon said, are not a signal that terrorism cases are too complex for juries but rather a sign that the current system is working.

"If you have 12 jurors who decide that an individual or an organization should not be convicted, I think that suggests these people are in fact not guilty of anything," Dixon said.

Andrew C. McCarthy prosecuted Omar Abdel Rahman, the man known as the blind sheik, for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bomb plot. McCarthy said that had the first Trade Center bombing, which killed six people, not happened, he still wonders whether the government could have secured convictions of the same defendants on more nebulous charges that they had made "fantastical" plans to blow up the United Nations and the Lincoln Tunnel.

"The argument that the people really are pathetic, hapless, incapable, has more resonance if you strike at an early stage," he said. "In a way, you're undone by your own efficiency. I do think it's harder to be a prosecutor today."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.