Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani  was sentenced by SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan yesterday to life in prison upon his conviction for conspiracy in the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings.  The government argued that he was a remorseless terrorist.  Ghailani’s lawyer argued that he was a dupe who had been tortured by the United States along the way.

But the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said that no matter how Mr. Ghailani was treated while in detention, “the impact on him pales in comparison to the suffering and the horror that he and his confederates caused.”

“It was a cold-blooded killing and maiming of innocent people on an enormous scale,” Judge Kaplan said. “The very purpose of the crime was to create terror by causing death and destruction.”

While this quote from the Times doesn’t seem to address anything substantive, dwelling instead on the melodramatic aspect of the sentence since actual findings can be so very boring, I’ll accept, arguendo, the proposition that Judge Kaplan did not agree that Ghailani was a mere dupe, but knew what he had gotten himself into and proceeded nonetheless.

So what’s the problem?  From the Wall Street Journal :

In November, a jury convicted Ghailani of one count of conspiracy but acquitted him of more than 280 other counts in connection with two truck bombings outside U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people and injured thousands.

If memory serves, the acquitted counts numbered 284.  Our mighty and powerful government indicted this man of 285 counts and managed to eke out a conviction on just one count?  How strong and omnipotent we are.  How righteous our use of our vast might. 

How embarrassing that Preet Bharara and Eric Holder piled it on, higher and higher, The most power nation to ever exist on the face of the earth, with resources so vast and overwhelming put toward the conviction of this one little man, and the best they could do was convict on the one generic conspiracy out of 285 counts of heinous crimes. 

Judge Kaplan imposed a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole on the single count of conviction.  I lack the knowledge to suggest that his sentence was inappropriate, and credit his sentence as fully justified.  But what would he have done had Ghailani been convicted to two counts? Or 37? Or all 285 counts?  Would Ghailani have been sentenced to life times 37?  What about life plus cancer? 

As it stands, there appears to be 284 counts that were tried that didn’t matter at all.  Is this what our system is all about, pointless charges that are merely piled on in the hope that the jury will find one, for whatever reason, to hang their hat on?  Would this life sentence be any different if it came upon a conviction for more than a single count?  Certainly Ghailani doesn’t get extra lives so that he can be punished over and over.

Assuming, as I do, that his connection to the deaths of 224 people, not to mention those injured by the attacks, justifies a sentence of life in prison, even if for only a single count of conviction, how does that compare to the life sentence imposed on those whose heinous crime is the theft of money?  It should give on pause, a long, long pause, when comparing the relative evils.  If Bernie Madoff should die in prison, shouldn’t Ghailani die many times in prison?  But it doesn’t work that way.

The one fact that cannot be ignored is that Ghailani was acquitted of 284 counts after trial.  That’s a massive number of counts, so much so that it cannot do other than make one believe that our government is insufferably petty, and our legal system can be so easily loaded, manipulated, drowned under raw numbers of meaningless charges, as to reduce it to a farce. 

Acquittal of 284 counts, with conviction on one, is farcical.

I’m well aware of how and why multiple counts can be charged, how the numerosity of laws, victims, the interplay between elements of offenses, could result in massive numbers of charges.  But I also recognize that most of the time, when a discrete act of carnage occurs, there is a fundamental point at issue.  Here, the point was whether Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was part of the coordinated Al Qaeda conspiracy to blow up the United States embassies in East Africa.  So charge him for that crime, and if the evidence is there, convict him and then sentence him.

Instead, the United States government embarrassed itself by losing 284 counts against Ghailani.  And embarrassed us, the citizens for whose benefit this government exists, in the process.  And embarrassed the legal system for which lawyers have dedicated their minds, efforts and beliefs, by making it appear farcical, fundamentally lacking in integrity, rather than the core of fairness and propriety that terrorists fight to undermine.

When the government decided to charge Ghailani with 285 counts, it put our system on trial.  It lost on 284 of those counts.  What sentence should be imposed on the government for being on the losing end of this farce?