When the state Legislature rushed to pass tough new anti-terrorism laws less than a week after 9/11, their target – al Qaeda and like-minded jihadists – was clear.
Their language? Not so much.
That’s the lesson this week after a Bronx jury handed down the state’s first terrorism conviction – to a common street thug.
The jury concluded that 25-year-old Edgar Morales meant to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” when his West Bronx gang showed up uninvited to a christening in 2002.
Morales fired his gun in the ensuing confrontation, killing a 10-year-old girl and paralyzing a man for life.
The terror designation means that he now faces increased jail time.
Let’s be clear: Morales deserves to go to jail for a very long time. The jury, indeed, did its duty: It convicted a guilty man based on the letter of the law (a noteworthy occurrence in The Bronx).
But Morales is no Osama bin Laden, and he shouldn’t be treated as such.
Most immediately to blame is Bronx DA Robert Johnson, who wins points for legal creativity in pressing the terror charge. The plain fact is that the law already gives him plenty of resources to battle gang-related crime in his borough.
There’s a lesson here for Albany, too: Hurried political statements make for bad law.
We’re glad that the Legislature wanted to show unity and defiance in the aftermath of 9/11. But six years later, it’s long past time to give the state’s anti-terror laws the due deliberation they didn’t get when they were passed.
At the very least, legislators need to make sure that only terrorists get convicted as terrorists.
This is no small quibble. Effective prosecution of the law requires clarity and proportion. A legal system that blurs the difference between street crime and terrorism won’t deal well with either.