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Loftus shot back that the charge was simply following the law: "Our office always takes those crimes seriously."
It all came down to whether the jury — a conglomeration of white and Asian health care workers, construction engineers, flight attendants, and mechanics — would believe that Mohsin had acted in self-defense. Pointing Mohsin's 9mm pistol in the air several times, Loftus asked the jury "to not tell people there's a different standard of defense in the Bayview: to shoot first and ask questions later."
When told before the trial that Loftus had never lost a firearms case, Caffese had responded, "I guess she'll be defeated this time, then," without missing a beat, but near the end of the two-and-a-half-week trial, she didn't look so sure. She discreetly crossed her chest and kissed her thumb before Loftus started her closing arguments, and gave Mohsin a tense pat on the back before rising to start her own.
"Bad things shouldn't happen to good people trying to do the right thing," Caffese said, her voice raw with emotion. She enunciated that "Debbie Smith is a path-o-log-i-cal liar" while writing the phrase on a whiteboard for the jury. As for Haggag, "He's a young, good, kind man trying to do the right thing in the worst possible moment of his life."
She continued, "What I'm about to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, is something I've never done in my career, and I've been doing this for over two decades. ... I have never argued, as I argue before you 12 people, that this man is an innocent man. ... I fear that if I don't do enough, that if I leave something out, then an innocent man will suffer."
If the jury members were moved, their faces didn't show it.
The two and a half years since the shooting have taken their toll on the close-knit Mohsin family. Adnan says he still fights the guilt of having his younger brother come to work in a high-crime part of the city — but not for giving him a gun to defend himself there. Haggag, meanwhile, worked a series of jobs, most recently managing an Oakland grocery store after his uncle put up a liquor store on property bond in lieu of the $200,000 bail. By the end of the trial, Haggag's wife was nine months pregnant with their second child. Mohsin said he had taken criminal justice classes, but felt that his life was on hold.
The wait was finally up on a recent Wednesday, when the jury turned around a verdict after just half a day of deliberations. "Are we ready for the jury to come in?" Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn asked.
Mohsin hunched forward in a suede jacket, his arms leaning on the table in front of him. The attorneys and Mohsin stood as the jurors entered without throwing Mohsin as much as a glance. The leader handed six sheets of paper, one for each major charge and the accompanying lesser crimes, to the court clerk to be read.
As the clerk read out the first "Not guilty," Adnan and Adeeb threw up their hands and erupted into cries. That was the charge that could have brought a 25-to-life sentence. As the third, fourth, and fifth rolled by, tears rolled down Adeeb's face, wrenched into a knot. As the clerk pronounced the sixth and final one, Caffese gave a short, seated bow to the jury and mouthed "Thank you." Adeeb did the same.
If the question of the trial was whether a jury will trust a convicted felon's word over that of an alleged criminal with no record, the answer is no. While some jurors said they didn't feel fully satisfied and many were frustrated by what they saw as a sloppy police investigation, they agreed they couldn't say Mohsin wasn't acting in lawful self-defense beyond reasonable doubt.
Judge Kahn asked Mohsin, who'd remained stoic throughout the verdict, whether he had anything to say to the jury. He smiled widely, looked up at the ceiling, shook his head, and wiped his face with his hands. Speechless. "I think that is his thanks," the judge said. He served Mohsin a stern parting admonishment: "Stay miles away from any firearm. Miles away from any firearm."
Mohsin is definitely planning to stay miles away from the Bayview. That's probably wise: Third Street has not forgotten him. When he showed up with the lawyers, judge, and police to examine the store before the trial, some local residents spotted him, said a man who identified himself as John Talley, the older brother of the man who burned the store. "What the heck is he doing out here?" Talley asked. "They was fittin' to beat his ass." The elder Talley still seems enraged about the shooting: "Arabs got it made in the United States. I've been in jail a lot of times and I've never seen one. Now if he were a black man, he'd be in the penitentiary."
Most in the Bayview have never heard Mohsin's version of events, and assume he was a vigilante pushed to the edge for being robbed once too often or, at the very least, a trigger-happy kid who freaked out and did something stupid. While not even other Arab store owners in the neighborhood would defend him, both the merchants and several people in the neighborhood, even John Talley, agreed that 25 years would have been too harsh, since Smith didn't die. "They don't know how it is down here," one shopkeeper said.
After his acquittal, Mohsin told SF Weekly he doesn't regret pulling the trigger: "I didn't do nothing wrong," he said. "I did what every other citizen would have done. ... I'm not a vigilante that would just try to do stuff. I did my stuff to prevent anything from happening, and it came up to a point where there was no chance" for an alternative.
