Brandon Mayfield moves on

Attorney falsely accused of Madrid terrorist bombing is happy to have challenged Patriot Act

By David Holley

The Beaverton Valley Times, Mar 5, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

Brandon Mayfield

Jaime Valdez / The Beaverton Valley Times

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Brandon Mayfield lives in a new house and works in a new law office.

His new home, however, is still near the neighborhood where he lived before his name became known throughout the world because of his wrongful arrest by the FBI in 2004. And his new law office, although a few miles away from the old one, is still in the same town: Beaverton.

Nearly five years after Mayfield was arrested by the FBI and falsely accused of participating in a train bombing in Madrid, he has made some progress in moving beyond a dark period that dramatically changed his family’s life.

But regaining normalcy has not been easy, he said.

It took help from fellow attorneys, who often referred clients to him, to get Mayfield’s law firm back on its feet. He said many former clients, with problems ranging from contract disputes to immigration cases, were worried about working with him, fearing that the government may be listening.

“I think some of them were weary because they thought the government continued to look at files, and listened to conversations that were privileged,” Mayfield said. “I suppose it changed the nature of some of the clients that I got.”

People still occasionally recognize him on the street, and reporters sporadically call him to follow up on his litigation with the U.S. government.

“When you guys stop calling me, I’ll feel normal,” said Mayfield, 42.

In the fall of 2006 the U.S. government paid Mayfield $2 million, and the FBI apologized, for detaining him in prison for 14 days, wiretapping his phones, searching his home when he wasn’t there and using faulty fingerprint identification to try to tie him to the train bombings.

In the same court ruling that gave him those victories, a judge made a decision that Mayfield believes was bigger: that the Patriot Act violated the Fourth Amendment by allowing the FBI to take those actions against Mayfield.

The federal government has since appealed that decision, and Mayfield’s Portland-based attorney, Elden Rosenthal, argued in front of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Feb. 5.

“This is a pretty unique experience to be in,” Rosenthal said. “I’m hopeful that as we put some distance between ourselves and 9/11, and with the new (presidential) administration, we’ll see a new attitude to the importance of citizens’ civil liberties.”

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