Innocence Is No Defense by Scott Horton

[Jefferson23]

November 4, 2011

The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg reports:

The U.S. military tribunal for the USS Cole bombing suspect has no power to free a captive found innocent of war crimes but shouldn’t be told the terror suspect could be held for life anyway, Pentagon prosecutors said in a court document made public Wednesday.

Defense lawyers want the judge presiding at the death-penalty trial of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri to notify would-be jurors that acquittal of war crimes won’t necessarily mean the Saudi-born captive walks free from the U.S. prison camps at Guantánamo.

In their motion, al-Nashiri’s lawyers had pressed the prosecution for a clear statement on what would happen in the event of an acquittal, arguing that prosecutors not be permitted to suggest to the jury that the defendant will go free. They quoted from an article written by Robert H. Jackson, a Supreme Court justice then on special leave to handle the prosecutions at Nuremberg: “The ultimate principle is that you must put no man on trial under the forms judicial proceedings if you are not willing to see him freed if not proven guilty.”

The prosecutors responded with a brief acknowledging that al-Nashiri would not be released if acquitted. Still, they insisted that the military jury has no right to know this, writing “The legality of the accused’s law-of-war detention is a matter beyond the scope of commission proceedings.”

remainder: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/11/hbc-90008300

[zalinda]

1. This is so twisted. How can any one support this? n/t

[JDPriestly]

2. 1984 has passed. Our situation is worse than ever dreamed of in 1984.

[malthaussen]

3. The principle is very simple:

Once you remove a person's rights, that person has no rights.

These trials should be held in Australia, where there are plenty of kangaroos.

-- Mal

[walerosco]

4. exactly

There should be a picture of US military prisioner trials in the dictionary space for Kangaroo courts. And you have to undertsnad that this is coming from a constitutional laywer.

[WingDinger]

5. He WAS innocent. NOW, he is too pissed at us not to be locked away.