Appeals Court Refuses to Transfer Padilla

Associated Press ^ | December 21, 2005 | Toni Locy

[AntiGuv]

WASHINGTON - In a sharp rebuke, a federal appeals court denied Wednesday a Bush administration request to transfer terrorism suspect Jose Padilla from military to civilian law enforcement custody.

The three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused the administration's request to vacate a September ruling that gave President Bush wide authority to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without charges on U.S. soil.

The decision, written by Judge Michael Luttig, questioned why the administration used one set of facts before the court for 3 1/2 years to justify holding Padilla without charges but used another set to convince a grand jury in Florida to indict him last month.

Luttig said the administration has risked its "credibility before the courts" by appearing to use the indictment of Padilla to thwart an appeal of the appeals court's decision that gave the president wide berth in holding enemy combatants.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport as he returned to the United States from Afghanistan. Justice and Defense Department officials alleged Padilla had come home to carry out an al-Qaida backed plot to blow up apartment buildings in New York, Washington or Florida.

[NJ_gent]

"I see no evidence that the enemy combatant designation has been misused - hell, its hardly been used at all."

Unless you're privvy to highly classified information, how exactly would you or I even know how often the enemy combatant designation has been used, let along misused?

[Sandy]

Judging from previous results, Scalia will be beating government lawyers unconscious with thick, heavy law books while Thomas quietly asks the President to pen his decision for him.

LOL. I hear you. Scalia totally rocked in Hamdi. Thomas was out to lunch. No telling where Roberts and Alito will end up on this one.

[NJ_gent]

"The short answer is that we are at war and at war you don't give information to the enemy. In WW2 this was known as "Loose lips sink ships." If the case is exposed to the discovery that is part of a civilian trial, we risk revealing to the enemy how we know what we know, and the extent of what we know - and also what we don't know (our weaknesses)."

Do you honestly believe that in all these years of having various classifications for information secrecy, that we have not developed acceptably reliable and secure means of and procedures for properly presenting such evidence at criminal trials?

[NJ_gent]

"I hope when push comes to shove, he tells the courts to enforce their own decisions."

Are you seriously hoping to see an armed conflict between US Federal Marshals and US military personnel on American soil?

[NJ_gent]

"I'd agree with that except that Taliban Johnny forfeited that protection when he took up arms against the US."

And yet he received counsel, a speedy civilian trial (which was averted via plea bargain), and a regular prison sentence.

[NJ_gent]

"now multiply that by coordinated terrorists attacks and it quickly adds up (especially if YOU or family / loved ones are one of the unlucky ones)."

Not only that, but just think of what will happen when 295 million terrorists enter the US armed with knives. There will only be about 700,000 Americans left alive if they each manage to average just 1 kill a piece!

[NJ_gent]

"Padilla's a flipping traitor"

How do you know?

I'm not saying he isn't, because I don't know that either. The fact is, neither of us know anything more than what our government is telling us. Of course, everyone's willing to believe whatever the government says when it's their guys running it (ie see liberals' reactions to Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc).

[NJ_gent]

"The Constitution is not a suicide pact"

*sigh* Not this again...

"Let's think about this for a moment - a group of farmers, lawyers, and businessmen sign their names to an open declaration of treason against the Crown, which controls the largest empire and the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and whose punishment for treason is generally death, and it's *NOT* a suicide pact?! I just love that one. Had the revolution turned out the way that any logically thinking person would have expected (it certainly hadn't completely succeeded just yet - see: War of 1812), every man whose name appeared on that Constitution would have been executed to serve as an example of what happens to traitors. These men put liberty far above their personal safety in the face of nearly certain death - but hey, it's not a suicide pact or anything." - NJ_Gent (2004)

[Lancey Howard]

Wow, is this ever confusing.

[NJ_gent]

"Not true, taking up arms in a foreign military can lose you your citizenship."

Joining the military or voting in an election in a foreign nation may be construed as a renunciation of citizenship. The United States government is incapable of revoking your citizenship against your will except in cases of naturalization involving fraud. You must, by overt and unambiguous action, renounce your claim to US citizenship to lose it. Even making war against the United States is not necessarily grounds for losing citizenship.

See here for more.

[NJ_gent]

"I'm really thinking of treason in the "adhering to the enemy" sense rather than in the "levying war" sense. *Planning* to levy war (or *planning* to set off a dirty bomb or fly a plane into a building) wouldn't be considered as *actually* levying war, so it couldn't Constitutionally be considered treason."

Treason requires overt acts with multiple witnesses for prosecution. It was intentionally made very difficult to prosecute by our founding fathers due to the fact that under Crown rule, the crime of 'treason' was a murky and nebulous charge levied most often by royalty in order to punish those who opposed or offended the king in some way. Because treason is so difficult to prosecute, lesser versions of it with less involved burdens of proof have been developed (espionage, for instance).

[NJ_gent]

"The administration can argue anyway they want, they can do handstands, because this case shouldn't be in the courts in the first place."

Perhaps it hasn't been made entirely clear thus far, but in this country, we have a system of government known as a 'representative republic'; not an absolute monarchy, nor a military dictatorship. Citizens have inviolable rights that supercede the executive's war-making powers. Some of those rights are defined quite clearly in a document known as The United States Constitution.

[NJ_gent]

"If the people have a problem with the way the executive is prosecuting a war, they should take it up with their elected representatives."

You've made it clear that the executive, in terms of any actions relating to war, has absolute and unquestionable authority that overrides laws, judges, and the US Constitution. As the aforementioned elected representatives are under the Constitution, and your position is that the President is above the Constitution, it would seem rather silly to complain to them. What are they going to do, exactly? It'd be like complaining to the janitor of IBM that the CEO is behaving inappropriately, and then expecting positive results.

"Interpreting the constitution as a suicide pact"

An originalist interpretation of the US Constitution (in other words, looking at it from a common sense perspective) plainly shows that the Constitution is nothing less than a suicide pact. The men who placed their signatures upon it faced, from any reasonably thinking person at the time's perspective, absolute and certain death by the hands of Crown military law enforcement as punishment for treason. No group of farmers, lawyers, and businessmen has any chance against the most powerful military in the world; signing an open declaration of treason against it is suicide.

"believing that your rights are so freaking sacred that they should be given deference to in every circumstance, no matter how extreme, even if the practical result is the death of citizens or soldiers at the hands of our enemies."

If our military fights to defend the rights of citizens, then it stands to reason that such a defense will inevitably result in the unfortunate death of some of our brave soldiers. If our military exists merely to preserve as many American lives from foreign aggression as possible, then its primary purpose should be to seek out peaceful resolution with any hostile force, giving them whatever money, land, or other such things that force requires so that it does not attack Americans. If the only thing we were interested in was saving lives, we should have surrendered to Osama, Saddam, and whoever else threatens us a long time ago. If we begged for our lives and did as we were told, I'm quite certain more of us would survive than will when we fight our enemies.

We do not surrender because mere survival is insufficient.

Live Free or Die

[Triple]

Good for littig, we cannot stand for one branch to be speaking out of both sides of its mouth to circumvent the system of checks and balances. The executive branch does not have absolute power, even when a republicn is in office.

[Triple]

Why do you take the opposite side from scalis in this matter?

Aren't you conservative?

[sgtbono2002]

Yes I lived in that same country for a while. That was before the war.

[lugsoul]

Ah, I see.

The fact that we are in an undeclared war that has resulted in fewer civilian and military casualties than any declared war in history and arguably than any other undeclared war means that the Constitution that has served this great nation well for two-plus centuries is no longer operable. Gotcha.

[Brilliant]

Who said anything about it not applying. I just said I don't give a damn.

[sgtbono2002]

Like I care.

[xzins]

Abdullah Muhajir (Padilla) is an enemy combatant, and that was the government's original position. This is documented at the Findlaw website:

Why not? Because the internees will be deemed enemy combatants. By whom? By the military alone - without any right to judicial review in a federal court or otherwise. The government's position is that its own decision as to who is an enemy combatant is binding on federal courts, and that it need not even offer the courts individualized facts to support particular detention decisions

Abdullah Muhajir (Padilla) was apprehended after spending time with Al Qaeda in Pakistan to receive orders. He was provided money and instructions to scout out the best location for a dirty bomb to be detonated. The government seized him as he stepped off the plane.

Demonstrating from the beginning its position, the government put him in a military jail at Ft Bragg. Ideally, he would have been shot as a spy, but there's no courage for those things anymore.

It was the court system that crossed into executive branch territory. The government is simply playing their silly little game.

If I am arrested for mowing my front lawn, and I go to court and argue that I'm actually a business that pays myself to cut my own lawn, and then argue that I'm a charity that cuts lawns and I cut my own lawn, then it should be apparent that the entire process and my arguments are in response to the stupidity of my being in court for something like cutting my front lawn.