Great reason for trying terrorists in federal court

An excellent article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, "The Trial," points to a terrific reason for trying Al Qaeda terrorists in the court system rather than military tribunals.

According to Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, in Washington, the military can’t simply grab suspects inside the U.S. and hold them without charge or a hearing. “It violates the Constitution, which extends to everyone inside the U.S.,” she said. “You can’t be seized without probable cause. You have the right to due process, and to a trial by a jury of your peers—which a military commission is not.”

...[Attorney General] Holder shook his head at Scott Brown’s assertion that America’s “laws are meant to protect this nation, not our enemies.” Such rhetoric, he said, was “inconsistent with a little organization called the United States Supreme Court.” During the Bush years, U.S. courts consistently struck down claims that detainees at Guantánamo, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were beyond the reach of U.S. and international law. Moreover, Guantánamo detainees receive legal counsel that is paid for by the U.S. government.

That got me to thinking about how the people who are screaming "military tribunal!" would feel if, while on vacation in a foreign country, they were accused of a serious crime, and found themselves spirited off to a secret prison outside of the normal justice system.

I'm pretty sure they'd now be screaming, "Get me a lawyer! Let me call the American embassy! This is unjust!"

Yet if the United States is going to allow some non-citizens accused of a crime on this country's soil to be handled outside of the constitutional justice system, why shouldn't other countries be able to do the same thing to our citizens?

I sympathize with the desire to deal with terrorists harshly and without mercy. But that's an emotional reaction. The U.S. is better than that.

Let's live up to our highest standards, which also happen to be the standards by which we'd like to be treated if we were arrested for a crime in another country.

Comments

[DJ]

"Serious crime" is one thing, "war crime" is another. If I'm ever caught trying to blow a plane full of civilians out of the air prior to landing in a foreign country, I'll both expect and deserve treatment by that country as a war criminal caught perpetrating an act of war. And I'd expect the US Embassy to concur.

[Blogger Brian]

DJ, emotionally I resonate with your point of view. But here's the slippery slope problem. Once we start saying that people who are "obviously" guilty don't deserve to be tried by a nation's justice system, we open the door to bureaucrats, politicians, officials, and others defining "obvious" to suit their own needs. I don't want to give any government official that much power to decide when to suspend the United States Constitution, or any other nation's laws.

[DJ]

Regardless of how red-handed they're caught, I'm not saying call anyone obviously guilty. I'm simply saying distinguish between criminal civilians and terrorist/war combatants and treat them accordingly.

Besides, how does one try a terrorist by a jury of his peers...send jury duty notices to sleeper cells? I doubt whether even Richard Reid's lawyer considered anyone on the jury his "peer."

[Carl]

Another problem with giving these foreign attackers the same rights as civilians, tourists or even illegals is that you have to Mirandize them. At that point they don't have to say anything and interogators lose the opportunity to get information from them about impending attacks, their support networks, etc.

This may come out eventually in court but that is a long process and by then further attacks may occur that could have been prevented.

Let the military have at them first and then they can turn them over to civilian courts if it turns out they are not "enemy combatants".

[Idler]

If an American were committing acts of war against a foreign country on that country's soil, he or she should be treated accordingly.

Terrorists are not merely combatants but unlawful combatants and should be treated as such. There should be clear evidence to qualify someone for such treatment, I agree. In this case there was.

[Rain]

They guy who tried the Christmas bombing of an airliner has talked plenty according to what I have read. I think the fear the right has about our court system is unjustified to date where it comes to terrorists.