More than five years after he was arrested on federal domestic terrorism charges, troubled River Forest resident Ron Haddad is finally set to take his case before a jury this week. And in a last minute change, a judge Tuesday morning allowed Haddad to dismiss his attorney and to represent himself in the trial.
Court filings show Haddad has repeatedly turned down prosecution offers for leniency and no prison time, insisting he has committed no crime and will be exonerated at trial.
Haddad has argued since his February 2009 arrest that his alleged threats were protected free speech, and that the federal statutes under which he was charged are overly broad and criminalize protected speech. Haddad also argued that his email were simply “political hyperbole.”
A week ago, Judge Virginia Kendall denied defense attorney Andrea Gambino’s motion to dismiss the indictment on first amendment and free speech grounds.
But as Haddad has done numerous times since his indictment, despite numerous admonitions from the judge to only file motions through his appointed defense counsel, he filed a hand written pro se objection (without benefit of counsel) with the court from the Metropolitan Correctional Center on April 14, objecting to the government’s proposed jury instructions in their entirety.
Alleging “outrageous government conduct,” Haddad contends that the prosecutors and the court have violated his “1st, 5th, 6th and 14th amendment rights.
That government conduct, he contends, is “enough to prove why this (indictment) being dismissed with prejudice is the only way this case could’ve ended in it’s ending.”
“If anyone in this U.S. District court wants to defy the Constitution please admit so on the record,” Haddad concluded.
Haddad was arrested on a criminal complaint Feb. 10, 2009 after federal agents executed a search warrant at his home the day before. He was subsequently charged in a 30-count criminal indictment in March.
Haddad is charged with sending numerous anonymous packages to various Chicago area politicians and oil company executives in Texas and California between 2007 and 2009. The packages were sent in five groups from various addresses in Chicago. Most of them contained letters including threats to kill or injure the addressees.
Those packages also contained either “an unidentified white powder, an unknown brown granular substance, or a plastic bag filled with an undisclosed liquid.”
Prosecutors say the fifth group of packages “carried live shotgun shells attached to a ‘popper-style firecracker toy.'”
Haddad came to the attention of federal authorities after he sent two emails from a personal email account containing similar “violent language” to many of the same individuals who had previously received letters. A River Forest detective who was shown the emails recognized the unique wording and terms used as very similar to emails he’d previously seen from Haddad.
The detective contacted the FBI, which immediately set up surveillance on Haddad around his parent’s Park Avenue home.
Haddad was originally released to the custody of his mother and to house arrest in February, 2009, but was incarcerated twice for violating the terms of his home confinement.
Haddad has also been found unfit for trial on three occasions. His refusal to cooperate with mental health professionals and take prescribed medications led Kendall to revoke his home confinement bond a second time, and he has spent the past two years in several federal lock ups.
While the judge on Tuesday allowed Haddad to defend himself, she also required that Gambino be retained to advise the defendant during the trial.
