(DETROIT) A Chicago activist convicted of lying to get U.S. citizenship in Detroit is resisting a government request for a mental-health exam as she tries to overturn her conviction.
Rasmea Odeh’s (OH’-duh) conviction could be thrown out if a federal judge finds that testimony about post-traumatic stress disorder is reliable. The testimony was excluded during her 2014 trial.
Odeh is a pro-Palestinian activist affiliated with the Arab American Action Network in Chicago.
The government disputes that PTSD had any role in Odeh’s failure to tell immigration officials that she had served time in an Israeli prison decades ago for bombings. Prosecutors say there’s plenty of legal precedent that allows them to have their expert examine Odeh.
Odeh’s lawyers say an exam could aggravate her PTSD symptoms and would be improper.
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