Ahmed Ressam case
Coughenour was the judge who first sentenced Ahmed Ressam,the "millennium bomber",who planned to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999. [10]
Coughenour wrote an op-ed in The New York Times entitled "How to Try a Terrorist",commenting on Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General of the United States. [11] Coughenour compared his experience in trying Ahmed Ressam with Michael B. Mukasey's trial of Omar Abdel Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He noted that Mukasey had complained about "the inadequacy of the current approach to terrorism prosecutions." He noted that Mukasey had complained about the limited number of terrorism convictions. [11] Coughenour paraphrased Mukasey:"Open prosecutions…potentially disclose to our enemies methods and sources of intelligence-gathering. Our Constitution does not adequately protect society from 'people who have cosmic goals that they are intent on achieving by cataclysmic means.'" Coughenour wrote that his experience: [11] "only strengthened my conviction that American courts,guided by the principles of our Constitution,are fully capable of trying suspected terrorists."
- Reversal,and remand to different judge
On July 27,2005,Coughenour sentenced Ressam to 22 years in prison plus 5 years of supervision after his release. [12] On February 2,2010,the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 22-year sentence Coughenour had handed down was too lenient and did not fit in the then mandatory sentencing guidelines,which indicated Ressam should have received at least 65 years and up to 130 years in prison. The court ordered that Ressam be resentenced by a different district court judge from Coughenour. [13] An en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit subsequently reconsidered the 2010 opinion. The en banc panel agreed that the 22-year sentence was too lenient but refused to remand the case to a different judge,instead sending the case back to Judge Coughenour. [14] On remand,Judge Coughenour sentenced Ressam to 37 years imprisonment to be followed by 5 years of supervised release. The United States did not appeal the sentence.
Birthright citizenship
On January 23,2025,Coughenour became the first federal judge in the United States to temporarily block President Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship,siding with the states of Arizona,Illinois,Oregon,and Washington. Coughenour called the order "blatantly unconstitutional." On February 6,2025,he granted a preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of the order. [16]
