Detainee cases begin to move

Scotusblog ^ | 7/1/08 | Lyle Denniston

[Dawnsblood]

Federal District judges in Washington, D.C., who will handle scores of pending and likely future challenges by Guantanamo Bay detainees to their confinement, decided on Monday to shift them temporarily to one judge to work on ways to coordinate the courts’ response. Attorneys for detainees began receiving notices Tuesday that the judges, in a closed-door session earlier in the day, had agreed that District Judge Thomas F. Hogan would handle “coordination and management” issues. The underlying cases will remain with the individual judges for future action on the merits.

The judges acted after holding two meetings with lawyers for the detainees and for the Justice Department, to explore what could be done to make the processing of the habeas challenges more efficient.

Meanwhile, an attorney for a detainee facing a war crimes trial at Guantanamo said he will file a challenge to try to stop those proceedings before a Pentagon military commission at the base on the island of Cuba. Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal said he would begin that challenge promptly.

Developments on detainee cases have been speeding up in the two and a half weeks since the Supreme Court, on June 12, ruled that the detainees have a constitutional right to file habeas petitions to contest the military’s detention and continued confinement of them.

That ruling applied directly to individuals not yet facing any war crimes or other criminal charges, but Professor Katyal’s client — Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan — will be seeking to apply that ruling to his own case. As of now, his trial at Guantanamo is scheduled to begin July 21.

[Dawnsblood]

Judge Hogan's Bio:

Judge Hogan was appointed to the United States District Court in August 1982 and became Chief Judge on June 19, 2001. He graduated from Georgetown University, receiving an A.B. (classical) in 1960. He attended George Washington University's masters program in American and English literature from 1960 to 1962, and he graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1966, where he was the St. Thomas More Fellow. Following law school, Judge Hogan clerked for Judge William B. Jones of the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 1966 to 1967. He served as counsel to the National Commission for the Reform of Federal Criminal Laws from 1967 to 1968, and was engaged in private practice from 1968 to 1982. He has been an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a Master of the Prettyman-Leventhal Inn of Court. He is Chair of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference, Chair of the Courtroom Technology Subcommittee, and served on the Board of the Federal Judicial Center.