The St. Pete Times reports this morning that Sami Al-Arian is not guilty on eight charges. So when Mel Martinez built a campaign against Betty Castor that consisted of, “Betty Castor is soft on terrorism,” what he meant to say was, “Betty Castor is soft on innocent residents of the US that haven’t been convicted of anything yet.”
Al-Arian isn’t a US Citizen, but he was a tenured computer science professor at USF. There are talks of deporting him after the conclusion of the trial. Sadly, if allowed to remain, he won’t be rejoining the computer science faculty. His plans? He wants to become a lawyer.
Just because a jury voted not to convict does not mean that he is innocent. If the glove doen’t fit ……. This also doesn’t make Martinez anything more than a Bush stooge who answered every question with the same “she’s soft on terrorism” statement. I voted for Betty. Probably jinxed her. No one I voted won.
It also doesn’t seem like the Americanism I was raised up on to fire a person pre-conviction. In some cases a paid suspension might be in order so as to protect an organization and it’s customers.
Well, unless you’ve completely lost faith in the system of adversarial justice, that’s exactly what it means when a jury of your peers finds a reasonable doubt. If you’ve lost faith in the adversarial justice system, well, I’d say welcome to America. Being at school here, I knew people who knew Betty personally, and I went as far as to campaign for her. Maybe I’m the one who jinxed her.
Now, there was a mistrial declared on a number of the charges, so he’s not out of hot water yet. And since you mention it, firing a tenured professor is supposed to be difficult. It appears that Dr. Al-Arian was fired for the ever popular “appearance of impropriety.” Hmm. Makes you wonder why certain public figures are treated so differently.