Can Mohammed Taheri-Azar Be Prosecuted for a Terrorist Offense?

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

On Friday, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hitting nine people. Fortunately, none of the nine were seriously injured. Taheri-azar has been charged with nine counts of attempted murder for his actions. The case has garnered quite a bit of press attention because Taheri-azar may have had a terrorist-type motivation. A search of his apartment suggests that Taheri-azar planned the attack for months and was disappointed that he didn't inflict more damage. He told police that he believed the U.S. was "killing his people across the sea," and that his actions reflected "an eye for an eye." Indeed, in his confession to a 911 dispatcher, Taheri-azar said that he wanted to "punish the government of the United States for [its] actions around the world," and he told the judge in his criminal case that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."

Despite Taheri-azar's statements, some question remains about his true motivations. One question mark, as my colleague Andrew Cochran pointed out, is the fact that Taheri-azar called 911 to turn himself in right after his Jeep escapades. Nonetheless, Taheri-azar's statements to authorities and to the court makes clear that there may have been an Islamist motivation to the attacks. Today I was on Studio B with Shepard Smith to discuss whether Taheri-azar could be charged with a terrorist offense. As it turns out, the answer is no.

Taheri-azar is being prosecuted in state court. But North Carolina does not have an applicable terrorism offense that can be brought to bear against him. There is a terrorism offense for weapons of mass destruction (not applicable here) and a terrorism sentencing enhancement for murder -- but Taheri-azar did not succeed in murdering anybody.

The federal sentencing guidelines do contain a sentencing enhancement in Guideline 3A1.4 for offenses designed to promote terrorism. (In turn, 18 U.S.C. 2232b(g)(5) sensibly defines a federal crime of terrorism as occurring when the act "is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.") The problem is that there appears to be no federal crime in this case to provide the federal courts with jurisdiction. The prosecution could argue that there is a federal civil rights violation because this was carried out on the basis of religion. The problem with that argument, though, is that Taheri-azar didn't target his victims on the basis of their religion. Taheri-azar may have been motivated by religion, but the civil rights laws only really come into play when the victim is targeted because of his religion.

This gives rise to a serious point. Terrorist crimes are worse than other crimes because of their potential to disrupt society. Terrorists make war on the United States, and we should provide prosecutors with an additional ability to punish the terrorists. In the future, we may well see a shift not only to more decentralized terrorist cells that act autonomously from broader terror networks, but also to more lone-wolf acts of terrorism. If we take Taheri-azar's statements in this case at face value, this would be an act of lone-wolf terror for which there is no way to enhance the perpetrator's sentence due to his terrorist motivations. This is an issue that states should now begin to address in their criminal codes.

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