Rasmea’s defense team: Odeh was denied her Fifth and Sixth constitutional rights
Odeh’s defense team asserts that she was denied her Fifth and Sixth Constitutional rights when she was prohibited to disclose the full details of her case at trial.
The brief states:
“Rasmea’s Odeh’s appeal is based on her claim that her Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were denied by rulings of the lower court which prevented her from presenting her complete defense at trial. At bottom, this claim is based on her fundamental constitutional right to a fair trial, the most basic right of any criminal defendant.”
Odeh was found guilty on March 12 in a U.S. court for allegedly falsifying information regarding previous arrests on her immigration and citizenship forms. Odeh was denied the right to disclose her rape and torture by Israeli military during her trial, a fact that is central to her defense.
Odeh’s defense team said she suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and consequently blocks out the trauma of her experience in an Israeli prison.
The prosecution denied the testimony from defense witness and torture expert. Dr. Mary Fabri. She would have explained how PTSD affected the way Rasmea filled out her immigration papers.
Odeh’s attorney, Michael Deutsch, wrote in the brief, “It was essential to Ms. Odeh’s defense that the expert be permitted to explain to the jury how the PTSD condition would have operated to block [Odeh’s] memory at the crucial time [of filling out her immigration papers]. This would not have been obvious, or even comprehensible to a lay person, who, without it, would have no basis at all to understand that Ms. Odeh was not intentionally lying in order to conceal her history.”
Odeh was not allowed to disclose the torture she endured while in an Israeli prison, which prevented her from revealing the most fundamental part of her case- that she was forced to confess to a crime that she did not commit in an Israeli court that convicts over 99 percent of Palestinians.
