Judge, Jury, and Executioner Rumsfeld
by TChris
This sums up nicely the Bush administration's policy regarding the detention of those it suspects of terrorism:
"The position of the executive branch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has consulted with lawyers for several detainees, "is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."
In the wake of the Padilla flip-flop, Adam Liptak explores the secret (or absent) standards the Bush administration uses to designate detainees as enemy combatants rather than criminal defendants. The prospect of indefinite detention as an enemy combatant is so frightening that it might induce someone in Padilla's shoes to plead guilty to a serious criminal charge with the hope of remaining under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system.
"In the case of John Walker Lindh," said his lawyer, James J. Brosnahan, "there was a suggestion that even if we got an acquittal that he could be declared an unlawful combatant, that he could be a Padilla."
Indeed, the plea agreement Mr. Lindh signed contains an unusual provision. "For the rest of the defendant's natural life," it says, "should the government determine that the defendant has engaged in" one of more than a score of crimes of terrorism, "the United States may immediately invoke any right it has at that time to capture and detain the defendant as an unlawful enemy combatant."
Mr. Freiman said he, too, had been told that the government reserved the right to detain Mr. Padilla again should he be acquitted.
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