A Muslim man who plotted to behead conservative author and activist Pamela Geller and others has been resentenced to 30 years in prison by a Boston judge after one of the four counts of his conviction was thrown out.
David Daoud Wright, 28, originally was convicted on four counts: Conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice. and conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS.
The count regarding ISIS was overturned in August 2019 when the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the trial judge made a mistake in how he explained the law to jurors.
Geller said in a victim’s impact statement delivered to the court in Boston that it’s “impossible to overstate the devastation that Daoud Wright has brought to my life and that of members of my family.”
“Not only did he target me for a brutal, cruel and violent death, but he targeted family members, and this will not even be over with his sentencing,” she said.
“Daoud Wright wanted to kill me over my First Amendment right, free speech – speech he was indoctrinated to think was an immense evil by his violent and absolutist belief system and ideology.”
The Washington Examiner reported the appeals court found the evidence of conspiring with ISIS was not as overwhelming as the law required.
Wright claimed in his own defense he was living in a fantasy world and didn’t actually support ISIS.
Justice David Barron wrote in the opinion of the court: “We conclude that a rational jury could have found from this evidence that Wright could have been simply ‘role-playing’ with respect to following ISIS’s direction.”
In addition to the 30-year sentence, the judge also determined Wright will be under observation for the rest of his life.
Geller said in her statement: “Not only has Daoud Wright made it impossible for me to live a normal life. Not only has he forced me to spend tens of thousands of dollars on security measures in my home, guards when I appear in public, and numerous other precautions. He terrorized our lives. He has caused me and my relatives physical and emotional distress, as well as the crippling financial costs required as a result of his mass murder plot.”
It was the second sentencing for Wright. He had been sentenced in 2017 to 28 years but was resentenced after the ISIS-linked charge was removed from his record.
Wright already has been serving time for his plot to attack Geller, who organized a 2015 Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, that was attacked by two Muslim gunman who said they were inspired by ISIS.
Shortly after the Garland attack, Wright’s uncle, Ussamah Rahim, informed Wright in a telephone call he didn’t want to wait for an opportunity to attack Geller and instead would target “those boys in blue.”
Hours after the call, police officers in Boston approached Rahim. He pulled out a knife and moved toward them, and was fatally shot.
Another defendant in the case, Nicholas Rovinski, testified against Wright at his trial and was supposed to be released in 2028. However, he was freed from prison recently and ordered to spend 10 years in home confinement. The 29-year-old has cerebral palsy and hypertension, and was thought to have been endangered by COVID-19 in prison.
Geller, who runs the Geller Report blog, is president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America. She’s the author of “Fatwa: Hunted in America” and other books.
She’s been a leader in defending free speech from censorship based on Islamic religious and political law. She repeatedly has been attacked for her defense of free speech from discredited organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.
