Yesterday the FBI with the cooperation of local authorities and the DOD killed a man holding a child in an underground bunker. He was not arrested, arraigned, given a trial, or legal representation before the death sentence was carried out. Isn’t this a serious violation of his constitutional rights?
Oh, wait, I meant drone strikes on US citizens who are terrorists. Sorry about the confusion.
I don’t think there was too much doubt about the fact this US citizen had intentionally murdered another citizen (4 shots) in front of numerous little kids, had kidnapped an innocent child and was holding him under threat of death. He had open discussions about the murder and hostage with authorities so his guilt really wasn’t in question.
As far as arraignment, legal representation or a trial I’d imagine he was first given plenty of opportunity to turn himself in, after which all would have been provided.
Finally, his right to any further due process was revoked when that came in direct conflict with the probable threat of death to his child hostage.
All these things would have been made available for him, but he terminated his own right by his continuous violent behavior. He’s solely to blame, not the laws in place or the people enforcing them.
Why is his citizenship relevant? Would it have made any difference if he was a citizen of Canada, or of Burkina Faso?
Heck, the police should have been able to shoot him last week, before he even killed anyone or took a hostage, because he was an imminent threat.
I’m looking for a significant difference between this this case and the use of drone strikes to kill US citizens are participating in active terrorism.
Which is why I raised the imminence of the threat. As far as I know, no one is arguing that the government can’t kill a person who is an imminent threat without violating the due process clause, whether it is a hostage taker in Alabama or a terrorist about to kill people. That’s been a recognized part of the law for a while now.
But this idea of imminent threat doesn’t extend so far as to allow the killing of US citizens without due process simply because they are believed to be members of Al Qaeda. Just like it didn’t extend to killing the guy the week before he took his actions based on the belief he was an unstable gun nut who might do something horrible.
ETA: this has been done is a bunch of threads before, so I’m not sure why we’re starting a new one now.
He had just killed that bus driver and was an active threat to the child he was holding hostage.
The US citizen in Yemen was not that kind of imminent threat (although, now that the government is redefining imminent to mean something else, maybe he was a double-plus good imminent threat).
Well, if the leaked memo is accurate, the definition of imminent is being stretched:
How many 5-year-old hostages were the guys in Yemen holding?
Kill a bus drive, kidnap a 5-year-old, take him to some underground bunker on your property, refuse to give him up to the police, and you bet your goddam ass the police can shoot you to free the kid.
There is no parallel here, TriPolar.
I think that’s his point.
While the definition of imminence is different, the underlying principle is the same. Would we kill someone who planned to abet the kidnapper in committing more murderers if either could not be captured alive? What definition of imminent danger would suffice to justify drone strikes against US citizens? Is there really an issue of constitutional rights or simply the process by which this is done to terrorists?
Only in the sense that killing someone about to shoot you in the head is the same as killing someone you think might at some point in the future, maybe, kinda likely, that you heard about didn’t like you, and might have some guns or something like that, so you kill them. Both are self-defense, yet you can get away with the first, but not the second. That imminence thing is kinda a big deal.
Outside of that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
No, as I replied to John, aside from the definition of imminent danger I think it’s the same. It’s much more difficult to dicuss imminent danger when terrorism is concerned. Partly because the facts aren’t all publicly available, but also because it’s not the simple condition of one man with a gun held to one boy’s head. We can certainly speculate that a US citizen may be directly involved in terrorism by providing aid in carrying out attacks against the US. Does he need to personally pull the trigger to warrent an assasination? And as in the case of the nutjob in the bunker, how far do we go in attempting to capture him alive before we have to act? Forever?
Now I’m not directing this at posters on this board, but the manner in which this is being addressed in the media. It is always (in my experience) presented before a backdrop of constitutional rights, even when the underlying issues of process and imminent danger are discussed. I don’t see this as a constitutional issue. I believe the president can authorize these acts overseas in state of war. However we have no clear, public, formally authorized process for doing this. Is that the only real issue, or is there a question of constitutional rights involved assuming such a process is defined and enacted?
So where is the line drawn? What do we do in the case where there is evidence that a US citizen overseas has already participated in at least one murder, intends to commit more, and we have no reasonable means of capturing him.
The plot was somewhat derivative.
Which means it isn’t the same. “They’re the same except for the most important part” isn’t a good argument for two things being the same.
One thing that jumps to mind is that this time they managed to kill only the target and not the kidnapped kid, his family, friends, neighbors, neighbors’ pets, and a few chumps who just happened to be minding their own business nearby, and then washed our hands of all responsibility because the bad guy had “surrounded himself” with them.
I don’t think most of us have a problem with targeting killings of someone like the guy in Yemen as long as there is some due process involved. We don’t want it to be at the discretion of the president, unless there is an actual imminent threat, eg, an ongoing hostage situation.
We also have to be able to ensure that innocent bystanders are not unduly put at risk.
Both of those issues came into play when we lobbed a bomb at the guy in Yemen.
When the person poses a “concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety". I’m not sure what more you want. You could probably google imminent threat, go on Lexis and check out self defense caselaw, or a plethora of different research methods. One thing I haven’t found thought is a definition of imminence that includes waiting months to act. Well, unless you’re this administration that is.
Daniel Webster described a nation taking pre-emptive self defense in the Caroline Affair by calling it “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” We could use that too.
Well then I agree with others that you’ve got a very loose definition of “same”.
Poisoning the well, a bit, I think. You take what is my actual argument, then tart it up with scare quotes and sneer at responsibility. Biased rhetoric; cheesey tactics.