Posted on 12/01/2002 3:57:49 PM PST by KayEyeDoubleDee
The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.
The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
That is just the point, they are NOT getting due process or access to the courts for a Habeus petition.
Padilla is incommunicado-no lawyer can see him. How do you file a habeus petition from a prison cell without help from the outside???
What due process means is that EVERYONE, even people that you don't like, get a day in court and that includes a jury trial if there are any penalties that exceed $20. Please read the sixth and seventh amendment again and You will see that ANY criminal charge gets a jury trial. Being an illegal combatant is nothing but a criminal charge that must be resolved by a jury trial. That is exactly what the constitution requires.
It is not my process. It is required by the constitution.
It applies to US citizens wherever they are arrested and applies to others if they are arrested on US soil. It probably does not apply to prisoners of war arrested outside the country. I am a little fuzzy on non-citizen prisoners of war arrested in the country. I know the WW2 German sabeteurs arrested on Long Island got court marshalled rather than a normal trial but I am not clear on whether that was right. We can have some fun debating that, but, for US citizens, there is no option. Anything else is an act of War on the people of the nation.
The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.
Your Quote...
Rights to a jury trial, etc. are constitutionally guaranteed in criminal trials. These guys aren't being tried. They aren't accused of being criminals- just combatants.
Under the above statement, if this law were to pass then anyone being tried as a terrorist would be exempt from what the 6th Amendment states we are all allowed to have.
In the case of the two animals you are talking about. They were caught plotting. The rights that I would like to see protected are of those people where no crime has been commited. If you read this part again..... may be investigated, jailed, interrogated,
that may indicate to me that they are also refering to people that have not been caught red handed as were the people you are talking about.
He has a lawyer only because he was first arrested in the normal, legal way and his family knew about it. They hired the lawyer who has still not been able to talk to his client.
No cigar for the government on that one.
This is where the thin red line has to be drawn. If it were up to me, I would say that anyone that has gone to the extent to get a proper legal citizinship in the USA should be granted the same rights as someone who was born here, but God help them if they are ever caught going against the USA from that day forward.
Any legal US citizin, whether they were born here or not, should be allowed the protection of our government and it's Constitution. If they are tried and convicted under those same laws then they have to do the time under American punishment. Illegals should be deported finger printed and never allowed back in the country.
I didn't say they had to be tax paying guarded camps....just throw them on an island we aren't using and forget them ; )
You don't know that Padilla has an attorney???????
Oh well, that explains your remarks.
Yaser Esam Hamdi v. Donald Rumsfeld:
Please read my earlier posts, there aren't many and it will save me from repeating myself.
I cannot understand how a conservative cannot be outraged by what is happening!
So they have no charges against them that they can rebut but they can be kept in jail indefinitely. What more do you need to see that this is a police state system?
I thought that on this issue, conservatives and libertarians would agree. Where are your principles?
I haven't seen the rest of the article (I don't want to register with them). If you read their article carefully, I believe you'll see they are talking only about "agents of foreign powers who may be citizens or US persons". If not please post what they say ( just an extract) here please.
Where is your respect for the Constitution?
If you don't like the Constitution go somewhere you won't be bothered by it.
Our Founders were not idiots.
"He was an enemy to the human name. Those who declare war against the human race may be struck out of existence as soon as they are apprehended. He was not executed according to those beautiful legal ceremonies which are pointed out by the laws in criminal cases. The enormity of his crimes did not entitle him to it. I am truly a friend to legal forms and methods; but, sir, the occasion warranted the measure.
A pirate, an outlaw, or a common enemy to all mankind, may be put to death at any time. It is justified by the laws of nature and nations. "
He would be astounded at the lengths we are going to to protect the rights of Padilla and Hamdi.
Probably the most hotly disputed element of the administration's approach is its contention that the president alone can designate individuals, including U.S. citizens, as enemy combatants, who can be detained with no access to lawyers or family members unless and until the president determines, in effect, that hostilities between the United States and that individual have ended.
Padilla was held as a material witness for a month after his May 8 arrest in Chicago before he was designated an enemy combatant. He is one of two U.S. citizens being held as enemy combatants at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The other is Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Saudi Taliban fighter who was captured by American troops in Afghanistan and sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until it was discovered that he was born in Louisiana.
Attorneys are challenging their detentions in federal court. While civil libertarians concede that the executive branch has well-established authority to name and confine members of enemy forces during wartime, they maintain that it is unconstitutional to subject U.S. citizens to indefinite confinement on little more than the president's declaration, especially given the inherently open-ended nature of an unconventional war against terrorism.
For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.
You know we can't post much of a Wash Post article.
"For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home"
This would require showing probable cause to the FISA court that he was an agent of a foreign power
"based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base."
If he met the definition in the congressional declaration
"Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, "
He would have his right to a Habeas Corpus petition just like Padilla and Hamdi.
"to the extent that they were aware of it."
The FISA court would know that he was in detention as they must closely supervise the cases.
Anyway, unless the congress suspends HC, the administration would have to give him access to a court.
I don't see anything new here. There has been consideration of having congress set up military tribunals for renegades- unless there are a lot of them I don't go for that idea, though it would be better than suspending HC.
"A federal district judge in Virginia, Robert G. Doumar"
This guy is a egotistical fool IMHO, the appeal court practically told him to give Hamdi monitored access to a lawyer but Doumar is trying to do it all himself.
"and then it never gives the individual a fair chance to see if the surveillance was lawful," Martin said "
But the warrant would have been reviewed by the FISA court, and then by the trial court in camera. An alien deportation hearing might not see it- I'm not sure.
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