[8] In 1995, Coughenour found Washington State's Sexually Violent Predator Law to be "criminal in nature".
Coughenour was the judge who first sentenced Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber", who planned to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999.
[10] Coughenour wrote an op-ed in The New York Times entitled "How to Try a Terrorist", commenting on Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General of the United States.
[11] Coughenour compared his experience in trying Ahmed Ressam with Michael B. Mukasey's trial of Omar Abdel Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Our Constitution does not adequately protect society from 'people who have cosmic goals that they are intent on achieving by cataclysmic means.'"
Coughenour wrote that his experience:[11] "only strengthened my conviction that American courts, guided by the principles of our Constitution, are fully capable of trying suspected terrorists."
In 1995, Coughenour presided over the civil trial of the Jason Scott case, which resulted in damages awarded against the Cult Awareness Network and deprogrammer Rick Ross.