'Liberty City Six' trial pricetag: $10M

MIAMI, May 7 (UPI) -- The case of six men accused of plotting to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower and attack FBI offices has cost at least $10 million, a newspaper analysis indicates.

"That is an extraordinary amount of money spent on a single case," law professor Michael Seigel of the University of Florida, a former federal prosecutor, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale.

The newspaper says it made its calculations after analyzing court records and government files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

"What a shameful waste of our taxes at the worst possible time," Michael Tein, another former federal prosecutor, told the newspaper. "Just think what $10 million could have done for our schoolchildren in Liberty City," a poor, largely black Miami neighborhood.

The defendants, an inner-city group known as the "Liberty City Six," are accused of plotting with al-Qaida to start an anti-U.S. government war. Four terror-related offenses against them include plotting to bomb the Sears Tower and the FBI headquarters in North Miami Beach, Fla.

Two previous mistrials occurred when juries failed to reach verdicts.

Deliberations in the third trial in Miami broke down this week when a female juror said she felt bullied by other panel members and did not want to continue deliberating.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard replaced her with an alternate. Lenard earlier removed another panel member who was ill.