New 9/11 trial judge steps down citing conflict of interest

Just weeks after getting the job, a Marine judge who was assigned to preside in the long-delayed trial of five men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001, attacks quit the case Friday, citing a series of potential conflicts of interest.

“Since being detailed as the military judge in this case, I have become aware of a significant personal connection to persons who were directly affected by the events of 9/11,” the judge, Col. Stephen F. Keane, wrote in a five-page recusal decision.

His departure is sure to delay the start of the trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, past next year, the 20th anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Keane had already extended litigation-filing deadlines in the death-penalty case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men, pushing the start of jury selection to August 9 at the earliest.

Keane got the case September 17 and said that, upon reflection, certain jobs he had held in his Marine career, as well as family connections, led him to conclude that his serving as a judge in the case “arguably creates an appearance of bias,” which would create a “significant appellate issue" if the case ended in conviction.

He cited a 2003-04 tour of duty in Iraq in which he worked for a task force that conducted investigations for the Guantánamo war crimes prosecutor. He also noted that he was raised in the New York area and had family members who were in New York on September 11, 2001. And he said he had a “close relative who retired from the Fire Department of New York long before 9/11.”

Keane had replaced an Air Force colonel, W. Shane Cohen, who resigned suddenly in March after less than a year on the case. Cohen said at the time that the decision was in “the best interests of my family.”

Including the chief judge for military commissions, Col. Douglas K. Watkins, who handled the case on a caretaker basis after Cohen left, five military judges have presided in the September 11 proceedings since the defendants were arraigned in May 2012. Now it will be up to Watkins, an Army judge who retires next year, to assign a sixth military judge to the case.