The US Supreme Court won’t hear David Daoud Wright’s challenge to the terrorism-related convictions stemming from his leadership of two men who plotted to kill Boston police officers in 2015 and political commentator Pamela Geller, whom terror group ISIS had targeted for death.
The justices did not issue a written explanation for their refusal and instead the clerk of the nation’s highest court sent a terse letter to Wright’s attorneys and the lower federal courts in Boston. The appeal request is called a writ of certiorari.
"The Court today entered the following order in the above-entitled case: The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,'' the letter from the US Supreme Court reads. It is dated Monday.
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Wright, of Everett, was convicted of leading the small group that included his uncle, Usaamah Rahim, 26, who was shot and killed when he confronted Boston police officers and FBI special agents with a knife in Roslindale in June 2015. Rahim, authorities said, was planning to board a bus and randomly attack victims.
Wright took the stand in his own defense during his trial in US District Court in Boston and said he was only engaging in an “ISIS role-play fantasy” because he was obese and had no social life. He was convicted on five charges, and sentenced to 28 years behind bars. Four of his five convictions were later upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
His lawyer, Michael T. Tumposky, asked the Supreme Court to review the remaining four, focusing part of his appeal on the use of electronic surveillance of Wright and his allies authorities conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He argued that no court has yet reviewed the constitutionality of the law that gives law enforcement authority to conduct seven days of surveillance under emergency conditions.
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“Because of the risks inherent in allowing agents of the executive branch to unilaterally and without oversight determine when to initiate surveillance of Americans on American soil, this Court ought to set clear guidelines" by reviewing Wright’s case, Tumposky wrote.
Tumposky also asked the court to tackle the most serious charge Wright was convicted of: conspiring to commit murder “involving conduct transcending national boundaries.” Wright, his attorney argued, never had contact with anyone overseas electronically or in person, and the only possible international connection was between Rahim and a “supposed ISIS recruiter,” not Wright.
“There was no evidence that he communicated with anyone else overseas,'' Tumposky wrote. Prosecutors should have been required to prove that [Wright] ... specifically intended that someone overseas would be involved in the terrorist act.”
Wright is expected to be resentenced later this year as a result of one of his convictions being stricken down.
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe.