But we already do this, look at people convicted of sexual crimes. We limit where they can live? How close they can go to kids? Require they register their whereabouts online?
So there is precident
I said that people shouldn’t be held forever just because they were arrested. The people you’re talking about had hearings and were convicted. That’s a huge difference.
Let’s momentarily ignore the fact that Khalid Sheik Mohammad is pleading guilty to a military commission for planning the 9/11 attack. He was waterboarded and tortured.
Do you think that this guy, the mastermind of 9/11, really should be put out on the street? Will that actually buy the United States goodwill, since there is nobody aside from Al Qaeda sympathizers who wants this one guy, KSM, out on the loose? Who is going to stand up and cheer to say, “Huzzah, the mastermind of 9/11 is free after spending seven years in an American gulag?”
It’s amazing how people keep reading past what’s actually written and seeing what they want to see. What part of “If we have sufficient evidence that an individual committed acts of terrorism or other crimes, then conduct a hearing and give him a sentence” did you not understand? I have no problem with convicting and locking up genuine criminals like Khalid Sheik Mohammad. It’s locking up the hundreds of other people that haven’t been convicted of any crime that I think should stop.
I guess I’m not making my question clear.
There is a difference between having sufficient evidence to know someone is a bad guy and having sufficient evidence to present in court. You seem to be saying that if the evidence will not hold up in court, then we should release the person, even if the guy is pretty high up there on the bad guy list. Unless I’m misunderstanding you, we can move on here.
You also seem to be saying that the US will recapture some of its international standing by releasing those who cannot be convicted in court. I’m asking you, who is going to be happy that the US released unquestionably bad guys, the small number of KSM like people, who are truly dangerous people, but for whom we have no chance of convicting in court because the Bush Administration tortured them to get evidence?
Note, I’m not asking about the cases in which someone has been locked up in Guantanamo on flimsy evidence. I’m asking about the likely much smaller number of guys we’ve locked up on convincing evidence that has been tainted by torture.
Now we’re moving into an area of evidence rules which is a question for legal scholars. I’d be willing to accept a loose definition of what evidence is allowed. Torture is wrong (and what does it say about this situation that we now have to state that?) but if the torture has already occurred, then the evidence exists.
But we need to keep a sense of truth about this. Evidence that was gathered solely by torture or solely by informants is not inherently trustworthy. You can get a person to confess to anything by torture and you can find someone to point the finger at whoever you want if that’s your goal. So this evidence must be confirmed by other more objective evidence. Even Khalid Sheik Mohammad should not be imprisoned just because somebody decided he must be guilty and then we tortured him until he agreed.
And as I said above, torture is wrong. We need to stop it now. The fact that I’m willing to accept the results of torture that has already occurred does not mean I condone torture as an investigatory tool.
No there isn’t.
My answer to the OP is that if there’s any evidence to try them for anything, they should be tried under normal criminal proceedings (with their time at Guantanamo accredited as time served if they’re convicted), if not, they should be returned to their home countries or the countries of their choice. If their home countries won’t take them, they should be given asylum in the US. They should also receive reparations and formal apologies.
Really? If a cop pulls someone over, and the results of an illegal search yield six dead hookers and a videotape of the driver murdering them, then the driver isn’t a bad guy?
Would you propose that driver is simply misunderstood?
I would propose the cop has enough evidence to prove it in court. I suppose you could say the evidence would be excluded from a trial, but the evidence still exists. In the case of the Gitmo prisoners, it does not. A confession extracted by torture is not evidence either inside a courtroom or outside.
You don’t think there’s a difference between “probable cause” and “beyond a reasonable doubt”?
Probable cause is cause for suspicion. Raven didn’t say you could have enough to suspect, he said you could have enough to KNOW, but not enough to present in court. I’m calling BS on that. If you don’t have enough to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, then you don’t have enough to KNOW.
Well, no kidding, that’s what I’ve been saying for the whole goddamn thread. Thanks for finally picking up on my point.
It is obvious we’re guessing here, as none of us know for certain what evidence exists against each of the people at Guantanamo. But I’m sure we can agree that 1) there are people there who have done nothing wrong, and 2) there has been “enhanced interrogation techniques” which are really torture.
Did torture lead to confessions that led to new evidence that confirmed the confessions? For the purposes of this thread, I’m saying there probably has been. In my view, there is no way that this evidence (although not produced directly because of torture, but torture led to a series of discoveries that produced new, solid evidence) should be allowed in a regular court. It would give a green light to cops torturing criminals in hopes that their confessions lead to new clues to search for new evidence.
In other words, I’m asking what we do if we have compelling evidence that a person is responsible for 9-11 or other serious terrorist attacks, and we also know that the evidence could never be heard in court because the law clearly prohibits its admission. So, what do we do?
Of course we should release a person if there’s not enough evidence to hold up in court. Isn’t that the whole purpose of having courts in the first place? Where is there room for debate on this?
If you’re willing to say that someone for whom we have overwhelming evidence was directly involved in the 9/11 attack, but that evidence could not (for good reason) be presented in court, and therefore the person has to be released, then we move on to question number two.
Assuming that no other country wants to take an immigrant who they believe is a hard-core Al Qaeda member, which is a very reasonable expectation, do you propose simply dropping him off in downtown Chicago with a bus ticket, $100, and a change of clothes?
More like several million.
Evidence which for good reason can’t be presented in court hardly sounds “overwhelming” to me. And if our courts are somehow ignoring overwhelming evidence, then that’s a problem with our courts that needs to be fixed.
And yes, if there’s no other country to which a detainee found not guilty would rather be released, then we do have an obligation to accept them here, as well as to give them enough resources to enable them to start a new life here. We caused the problem in the first place, so it’s our responsibility to do as much as we can to solve it.
People have been tried with national-secret information used as evidence before.
One might rightfully ask what secrets still have value after 7 years (other than the “secret” of how they’ve been treated), or what the detainees might know that would still be useful by now.
I’m going to have to ask for a cite on that one if you’re talking about courts (and if you mean “tried using information that wasn’t given to the defendant during trial,” and almost certainly if you mean “tried using evidence that wasn’t available to the public at or after trial”).
Even the Rosenbergs, IIRC, were tried in open court. (trial in open court, to ensure anyone can watch the procedure and see that it’s fair, is one of the hallmarks of our jurisprudence).
IANAL, but the concept of secret evidence doesn’t fly under the sixth amendment right to confrontation (“to be confronted with the witnesses against them,”) the fifth amendment right to due process (a defendant can’t try to oppose or contradict evidence he can’t see), and the Sixth Amendment jury right (plus the fact that the U.S. has no official secrets act-so once a trial jury’s been shown the evidence, I can’t think of a way to stop them from telling whoever they want to).
Doesn’t stop the use of what used to be national secrets at trial-but that as I understand it, the prosecutor’s choices are “reveal that information” or “don’t use it at trial”-so if it was a secret before trial, it won’t be afterwards.
I think there are some cases where the witness may not be identified (say, as a police undercover operative or a child)–but those still have the evidence in open court.
This whole thing is certainly a mess, and it just goes to show you what will happen if an administration tries to skate around the pesky rule of law, the constitution and international law regarding POWs.
The really sucky thing is that this problem was all of Bush’s creation, yet he seems quite content to let someone else clean up his mess. (quelle suprise!)