After Mohammed arrived at Guantánamo, a team of F.B.I. and military interrogators tried to elicit from him and his co-defendants the same confessions that the C.I.A. had obtained about the 9/11 plot, but by using only legal means of interrogation.
It is at work when judges impose tougher penalties on black defendants than on white defendants for the same crimes.
Their profit was $3.1 million, according to the S.E.C. Stephen J. Crimmins, a partner at Pepper Hamilton in Washington and a former deputy chief litigation counsel at the S.E.C., said, "This action by the S.E.C. suggests that they are thinking about adding defendants and they would want to have all the defendants in the same lawsuit".
Black American criminal defendants are sentenced to 10percentt longer prison terms than white American criminal defendants for the same crime.
Judging by their insouciance, the defendants thought the same.
The outcome highlights the broader issue of trying two or more defendants at the same time with separate juries.
While they may be defendants today, the same individuals were probably victims yesterday; or will be tomorrow.
And given that the defendants spent the same evening on a rampage of muggings and assaults, there was little reason for jurors to doubt the confessions as genuine.
The fix is for more stringent rules regarding the use of this tactic and, more important, the prosecution of defendants in the same court before the same judge.
One problem, Mr. Norwood said, is that doctors and health plans would be tried under different legal standards even if they were named as defendants in the same case.
The judges, the prison officers and the local police are Scots, and the defendants have the same rights to the presumption of innocence as Scottish citizens have, as well as to family visits, an exercise bicycle and a television with Arabic channels.
