Dance a jig of glee, laugh manically for several hours, get drunk on champagne, and start praying that Tony Blair is next.
The notion that a criminal statute is “void for vagueness” if it fails to specifically lay out the conduct that is prohibited and specifically lay out the punishment that may be applied for violation of it also arises from the Due Process Clause.
I’m assuming you’re not asking for cites of people asserting that Bush should be jailed for starting a war of aggression, for example, despite the lack of any such crime and penalty appearing in law.
So, yeah, I see a whole bunch of people willing to give him a fair trial, let him call witnesses on his own behalf, confront prosecution witnesses, and see the evidence arrayed against him… while defending himself against a charge that doesn’t exist or carry a penalty in US law.
THAT is a violation of Due Process.
Can a U.S. citizen ever be subject to the criminal law of a non-U.S. jurisdiction?
That’s not fair.
It’s true I’m not particularly interested in making your arguments for you, but what I said there was no law against violating the Geneva Conventions. There are (of course!) many laws that prohibit specific actions that are ALSO prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, but there’s no law that simply incorporates the entirety of the Geneva Conventions and says, “Any violation of THIS is punishable by 10 years in prison.” The law you quoted is one such: it specifies acts that are specifically defined as war crimes and lays out a punishment; it doesn’t give the Geneva Conventions as a whole the force of law.
What I have said over and over is: show me that law you wish to charge him with violating. It’s not the job of the defense to show that his client is innocent of every law on the books; it’s the job of the prosecution to point out the specific law the accused is said to have transgressed.
The closest you’ve come, in terms of alleging an act that is clearly illegal, are the FISA privacy violations.
Of course. Ask any unfortunate US citizen who tried to smuggle heroin through Thailand and got caught.
If a Panamanian drug kingpin ordered/directed/whatever acts that were carried out in Thailand that violated Thai’s drug laws, under what circumstances and using what methods could the Thai government try to obtain custody of the kingpin and subject him to Thai criminal jurisdiction?
Let me expand on this point a little.
If I were hired to defend Bush, it would be no problem. I’m not on board with everything that Bush has done, but we set the bar high for criminal offenses, and we cannot provide the President with less protection of his civil liberty that we provide to a pedophile or a murderer.
If I were hired to build a case against Bush, I would advise my employer that it was an tremendously uphill climb, and that typically prosecutorial resources are not spent when there’s such a low rate of return… but ultimately, of course, it would be my employer’s checkbook and not mine, so not my call.
Well, I’m not a lawyer but TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441
§ 2441. War crimes says:
(c) Definition.— As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct—
(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;
That reads to me like the Geneva Convention, in its entirety, is incorporated into US law. That part does not specify only a specific part of the Convention applies, it says a “breach in any” of the conventions signed in Geneva. And note some rather substantial penalties are explicitly laid out.
Further, even if it is somehow more narrowly defined (doesn’t look like it but if it was) what is it you think we are all on about here? To quibble like that is disingenuous at least.
I have asked your opinion on some of this and you have not responded. First we have violations of the Geneva Convention as noted above. Further the SCOTUS already ruled on one case that the administration was in violation of the Geneva Convention. We also have the International Red Cross saying they believe there were substantial human rights violations.
Even if Bush did not “pull the trigger”, so to speak, is not being part of a conspiracy sufficient to find someone guilty? Is it impossible to make a case that Bush, as head of the Administration and Commander-in-Chief could be part of a conspiracy to take these illegal actions thus making him culpable? It strains credulity to suggest he was somehow in the dark on all of this and not complicit in these actions.
Good question.
The answer turns out to be, essentially, “Might makes right.”
Panama’s Manuel Noreiga learned this lesson; so did Andrew Luster. Luster, for those who are scratching their heads, was the heir to the comestics kingdom of Max Factor, and was also accused of being a date rapist. He fled to Mexico to avoid trial; Duane “Dog” Chapman, a bounty hunter from the U.S., entered Mexico and essentially kidnapped Luster and returned him to the U.S. – actions that were apparently violative of Mexican law. The Mexicans protested, and although Chapman was arrested and held for extradition, he was never actually extradited. The Hawaii state legislature passed a resolution asking Mexico to drop charges, and ultimately a Mexican court ruled that the arrest wasn’t timely and did in fact drop all charges.
If the Thai government had the weight to reach out and capture the drug kingpin and weather the storm, then they could subject him to Thai justice. In general – they don’t.
Good grief, man – there are more than one “Convention” and there are amendment protocols to which the US is not a ratifier – most notably Protocol I, which relates to combatants and prisoners of war. This was adopted in 1979 and never ratified by the U.S., and it’s the source of much of the brouhahaha regarding “unlawful combatants” which in turn forms much of the “send him to jail” outrage against Bush. I’m sorry for not laying this out more clearly, but it’s been discussed in excruciating detail in previous threads and I guess I assumed everyone was not only familiar with it, but sick of it.
Criminal statutes are ALWAYS narrowly construed against the government. That’s the whole point – before the government can punish you for a crime, it has to specifically and narrowly lay out the conduct that is forbidden. General, vague prohibitions cannot create crimes; a person has not know what conduct is forbidden with enough specificity to conform his own actions to what the law requires.
Again: specifics, please. You’ve quoted a law. What, SPECIFICALLY, was Bush’s act that violated that law? Which, SPECIFICALLY, of the “substantial human rights violations” was an act that is also illegal?
No. Civil liability attaches that way – you can sue a company when its employees do something tortious, because there’s a doctrine of civil law that makes the master liable for the actions of the servant.
Criminal liability requires more direct participation. The mere fact that he was Commander-in-Chief and his subordinates did bad stuff does not create criminal liability for him.
Now, you could show a conspiracy if you could show that Bush was directly involved in an agreement to violate the law, even if he, personally, didn’t do the illegal act that was the basis of the conspiracy. But your theory for that is lacking: “it strains credulity” is not enough. What is the evidence? Who has said, directly, “The President told me to…?” What paper has Bush’s signature on it? ON what, besides speculation, do you base this idea?
You have to have SOMETHING. Probable cause, at least. You can’t say, “Well, he must have! He’s EVIL!!1!”
With respect to torture, the President said it directly.
I am sure that you figure that his various statements amount to ordering (or, at least, approving) torture, but you would need to provide an exact order issued by the president to use specific methods of “interrogation” in order to prove that claim in court.
You and I know that he was basing his “judgment” on Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer fiction, but actually proving criminal actions in a court of law require more than any evidence than I have seen presented.
Here ya go:
Worth reading the whole article. Cites included in there along with the FBI e-mail detailing the Executive Order.
Read the words: he approved the discussions ABOUT harsh interrogation techniques. He doesn’t say that he approved any particular techniques.
Now, if the next claim is true, then you got something. “Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.” If true, that’s at least probable cause to believe the crime of torture was in play. Long, long way from a conviction, but certainly probable cause.
Where is that Executive Order?
From your own cite’s lead para:
Yes, so read my cite “He concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that a limited number of war crimes had been committed in Iraq, but that the crimes allegedly committed by nationals of states parties did not appear to meet the required gravity threshold for an ICC investigation.[6”
No one doubts that a few individuals crossed the line. That’s different than Bush personally ordering same.
Did the ICC say anything about an Indictment or charges for GWB relating to anything outside of Iraq? If not, then the argument stands.
The UN Security Council, where oddly, the USA has a Veto.
That’s because, while Bricker may be running straight to court, AFAICT the question he raised that I’m responding to is about the attitude of posters concerning due process.
IMHO, people don’t need to see courtroom-quality evidence of guilt to believe that someone ought to be on trial. They’re justified in holding that position if what’s in the public record gives them strong reason to believe that such evidence wouldn’t be hard to find, if properly motivated and empowered officials were looking for it.
No, they didn’t - my point exactly. You were the one who turned the ICC’s statement about Iraq into a more universal exoneration.
It is. There are no charges against GWB by the ICC. For anything. If you find any, please let us know.