However, even when the insanity defense is successful, defendants are rarely set free.
"Music infringement claims tend to be settled early on, with financially successful defendants doling out basically extorted payoffs to potential plaintiffs rather than facing expensive, protracted and embarrassing litigation," said Charles Cronin, a lecturer at the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, who specializes in music copyright.
"We have executed several operations, and most of them were successful," the defendant says in Arabic on one tape.
A successful libel defendant obviously does not get any damages so these reforms will prevent all but the rich from being able to defend their right to free speech against wealthy or corporate libel claimants.
He also stands as one of history's most successful criminal defendants.
If this defence had been successful, the defendants would have escaped the death penalty to face either life imprisonment, or up to 10 years in jail.
Hillary had been teaching at the University of Arkansas School of Law, and also oversaw the school's legal-aid clinic; she was a strong opponent of the death penalty, and helped prepare an amicus-curiae brief in support of an appeal (which was successful) for a defendant on death row.
Washington state provides for an award of $10,000 plus costs and attorney's fees to a successful Anti-SLAPP defendant, or to the plaintiff if the Anti-SLAPP motion itself was frivolous.
In fact, Patton Boggs concedes that it does not know "the exact manner and facts" of defendants' "efforts," admitting that it is "privy mainly to the result of Defendants' misconduct" (although it attributes this ignorance to defendants' successful efforts to conceal their alleged wrongdoing).
US Attorney Steven Dettelbach trumpeted the successful prosecution: "These defendants were found to have engaged in terrorist activities … These sentences should send a message that when individuals decide to endanger the safety of our community, they will be held to account".
