By Bob Egelko
The San Francisco Chronicle
SILICON VALLEY, Calif. — A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the convictions and 17-year prison sentence of a former Silicon Valley high-tech executive who was found guilty of lying during a patent case and of asking an undercover informant to burn a witness’ car.
Amr Mohsen was also charged with plotting to kill U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who had presided over his patent case, but was acquitted in March 2006. However, the jury found him guilty of 17 felonies, including perjury, witness tampering and soliciting arson.
In Wednesday’s ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said U.S. District Judge William Shubb, who oversaw Mohsen’s trial, should have talked with the opposing lawyers before denying the jury’s written request to see the grand jury indictment that spelled out the charges. But the court said the error had caused no harm because the jurors’ verdict form contained all the pertinent details.
The court also upheld Shubb’s decision to increase Mohsen’s sentence based on evidence that he intended to cause losses of more than $40 million in the patent case.
Mohsen was the founder and chief executive of Aptix Corp. in Sunnyvale, which supplied manufacturing and design technology to electronics companies. During depositions in an unsuccessful patent suit against a rival company, prosecutors said, Mohsen altered an engineering notebook to support his assertion that he had invented circuit board technology.
While awaiting trial on the perjury charge, he was arrested in April 2004 with a newly issued passport while making plans to leave the country, the FBI said. He was convicted of contempt for applying for a passport in violation of his bail conditions, and of soliciting arson of a witness’ car in phone calls from Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
An FBI agent said Mohsen tried to recruit a fellow jail inmate in 2004 to kill Alsup, who was then scheduled to preside over his criminal trial, but the jury acquitted him of conspiracy to murder the judge.
Copyright 2009 The San Francisco Chronicle