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Ciccolo Pleads Innocent to Terror Charges
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
04:24PM / Thursday, July 07, 2016
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Northampton attorney David Hoose speaks outside federal court in Springfield on Thursday.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — An Adams man facing two terrorism-related charges pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court on Thursday afternoon.

Alexander Ciccolo, 23, was arraigned on several charges leveled in a superseding indictment released last week by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
 
To each count, Ciccolo answered in a loud, clear voice, “not guilty,” in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine A. Robertson.
 
After the 15-minute hearing, Ciccolo’s attorney declined to speculate about the possibility of a plea bargain on the charges, which include accusations that he attempted to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempted to use weapons of mass destruction.
 
“On the day of arraignment, we don’t rule anything out,” Northampton attorney David Hoose said when asked if he knew whether Ciccolo wanted to go to trial on the offenses.
 
Ciccolo was arrested just more than a year ago, on July 4, 2015, and subsequently held on a federal weapons possession charge. While in custody, he also was charged with an assault against a prison employee, a nurse who was examining him at the Franklin County Correctional Center.
 
Until last week, those were the only announced charges against Ciccolo. The government did, however, last July release lengthy supporting documentation in its bid to deny Ciccolo bail, a request granted by Robertson. Since last summer, Ciccolo has been held at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Rhode Island.
 
On Thursday, the government asked Robertson to exclude the next six months from the Speedy Trial Act timetable. She denied that request.
 
“My reservation about excluding six months is we’re already at the point where Mr. Ciccolo is incarcerated for a year,” Robertson said. “I’d like to consider requests at the time they come up and not delay things prospectively.”
 
Instead, Robertson set a Nov. 29 date for the next status conference in the case. She did agree to exclude the intervening five months from the Speedy Trial Act clock.
 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Deepika Shukla told Robertson that the government expects to turn over a “pretty substantial” volume of discovery material to the defense by its next deadline, 28 days from Thursday’s arraignment.
 
Robertson said normally the defense would then have a couple of weeks to review the evidence before deciding whether to seek additional discovery. But she asked Hoose whether that would be sufficient.
 
Hoose explained that he would be out of town for three weeks starting at the end of July and had a month-long murder trial scheduled for just after Labor Day.
 
“The reality is I’ll not be in a position to begin culling through this until the end of September, beginning of October,” Hoose told Robertson.
 
She agreed to give him until Oct. 31 to request additional discovery.
 
“I’ll then give the government four additional weeks to respond to discovery requests by the defense to the extent additional discovery requests are made,” Robertson said. “If there are requests by the defense that are complex to which it would take the government additional time to respond, I’ll certainly listen to the government.”
 
Shukla asked Robertson to declare U.S. versus Ciccolo a “complex case” under the local rules of U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Robertson said she recognized the case’s inherent complexity but was not sure the designation mattered.
 
“At each step along the way, designating it as a complex case doesn’t preclude us considering whether a delay is in the interest of justice,” said Robertson, who last month asked the government to make a decision about whether to file a superseding indictment.
 
After the hearing, Hoose said he agreed with Robertson’s assessment that delays needed to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
 
“From my perspective, [U.S. versus Ciccolo] is really only complex in terms of the volume of material that need to be gone through,” Hoose said.
 
Hoose said he had a “substantial document management issue,” contending with the discovery material already turned over plus the material expected in the next 28 days.
 
Hoose declined to speculate about whether Ciccolo felt any relief about moving out of the legal limbo of the past 12 months with the announcement of the superseding indictment. He talked only generally about the effect that delay has had on his client.

“This is his first time incarcerated, and like with a lot of people, it takes time to adjust,” Hoose said. “I don’t have any concerns at the moment. I think he’s in as good a place as someone can be.”
 
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