Currently, the lawyer defending the dirty bomb guy is claiming that he’s being held illegally and should be set free. Now, personally, I don’t believe there’s a chance in hell of this guy being let go for any reason here in the US considering what’s going on, but I’m curious:
If you were assigned to defend this guy, would you try to get him out of jail/imprisonment before the trial? Like I said, I doubt it would ever happen that they’d let him go, so do you feel that his stating this is just a matter of “Well, I might as well make it LOOK like I care what I’m doing…”? How hard would you defend this guy?
Well some people say the computer will lead to the down fall of society and the social disintegration in our culture, others will say it the TV and still others will say it’s unprotected sex. But when the line comes up and you have to vote, I say it will be the LAWYERS who bring down society, who defend the undefendable, the trash, the killers, the slime living in our gutters.
So for the OP…how do you defend someone like the ‘American Al Queda’ ? Well you swallow your Patriotism, suck up your pride in your nation, and then sell your soul to the almighty Dollar Bill. She sucks…
The problem is that the government has not even charged the alleged Mr. Dirtybomb-pants with a crime.
The administration seems to be saying that we don’t have charge this American citizen with a crime, but can merely keep him locked up indefinately for ease of questioning. And they are doing this with only their own claim that he was involved, untested by the courts. This to me seems to be about as big a perversion of the Anglo-American criminal justice system as you can get.
If there is real evicence that he was involved with a terrorist act, I say Hell Yes, keep him locked up. But it really disturbs me that the government appears to claim the power to keep someone locked up without presenting any evidence of terrorist or any other criminal involvement.
Personally, as I rant about here, I think the administration’s strategy will backfire disasterously, to the detriment of the government and the American public.
REV ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is wonderful for some people…But I must say, in lieu of 9/11, the Gov’t didn’t detain this guy for no particular reason…so that said, they must have reason to detain him. Also, The Al Queda operative who was already in custody fingered the guy in Chicago…Is that enough to detain him…I’d say so. Had the Story gone differently, and read:
This just in: The Sears Tower in Chicago has been the target of a ‘Dirty Bomb’ attack apparently staged by an ‘American Al Queda’ opperative based in Down town Chicago. The man was arrested shortly after the attack, he was found directly from information obtained from Abu Zaief (sp?) high ranking Al Queda offical already detained by US officials in N.Carolina.
So ‘Innocent till proven guilty’ does not hold much with me when I think of what could have been thwarted.
Well, suppose I get it into my head that you might do something nasty that will kill lots of people. I suppose I don’t need proof, or due process; since after Sept 11 I can just lock you up and deny you any access to a lawyer who can defend you. Is that correct?
The Al Queda Terrorist organization would love nothing more than to inflict as much pain and ungodly nastiness all over the United States. Utilizing American citizens is not out of the question for them. My next door neighbor has no worries, she will not be detained by the Government of the United States as an Enemy Combatant, she was not splunking around the Middle east training with Al Queda, learning how to build radiologcal bombs. Due process is one thing, holding someone who is a marked threat is an entirely different ball of wax. I would not want to be in his lawyers shoes for more obvious reasons than I feel I need to get into. If I have offended you REV I’m sorry, if you are a lawyer, then tell me how a defense for this guy is going to roll in a court room knowing his name comes up more than once as an Al Queda operative?
If the defense only has due process infractions and innocent till proven guilty assumptions, then this case is as bullshit as trying to defend Charlie Manson.
Pholsphr, if there’s all this evidence you mention, then why wouldn’t normal due process lock him up? Surely you realize bad people in the past have been successfully jailed even though they had access to a lawyer?
That’s easy enough to say until that “slime” is you (or me).
Revtim this will all be going to the Supreme Court and until it does I’m afraid I’m on the side of what is being done. This is treason we’re dealing with. Just out of curiosity I’d like to know if anyone today has ever heard the story of “the man without a country”? That and the name “Benedict Arnold” used to be fairly common. Not anymore.
I am proud to have defended the undefendable, the trash, the killers, the slime living in our gutters. I spent several years as a court appointed attorney, and it was difficult, challenging, and draining.
Even though this person may be a member of a terrorist organization, he is JUST as entitled to competent legal counsel as the next person.
If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer not to have to just trust the government to get things right. See any of a number of death penalty cases where actual innocence has been conclusively proved after someone has been convicted, and spent years of their life in prison. Oh, wait. We don’t care about them, because they’re undefendable, the trash, the killers, the slime living in our gutters. Ask that guy in (I think) Illinois who was exonerated after like 12 years in prison, and who was brain damaged after being beaten by another prisoner.
The reason this country is better than many countries where these terrorists originate, and is a target, is because we actually say that people have rights, and then actually back that up, even when the person in question despises everything our country stands for.
Wow for somebody who is obviously a very proud patriotic American you sure seem to accept the erosion of the some of the things that make America a great country very well.
If this case was in the regular criminal court system, it wouldn’t even get past the preliminary hearing. They government knows this too, which is obviously why they are laying this “enemy combatant” crap on us.
Can anyone tell me what they [do have that convinces them that this guy was going to build a “dirty bomb”? I haven’t heard anything about it at all. They do say that he hadn’t actually built anything, or obtained the radioactive material, so what, exactly did he do that made them arrest him? All I’ve heard so far is that he attended terrorist courses in Afghanistan. But they must know of plenty of people who did that. What makes this guy so different, and such a threat?
What makes this guy different is that he was brought forward after the info came out about the FBI and CIA getting caught with their pants down, in my opinion. We’ve had him in illegal custody since early May.
If I were assigned to defend him, I would zealously represent his interests, bounded by the law and the canons of ethics.
Specifically, I would try to force a preliminary hearing, or at least a prosecutor’s information – some sort of charging document – to ensure that the government was meeting its burden. If the government’s evidence indicated that the man was such a danger that setting any kind of bail was inappropriate, the judge would order him held without bail.
The job of the defense lawyer is to effectuate the constitutional guarantee of the Sixth Amendment, that all persons have a right to counsel at all critical stages of a criminal proceeding. We cannot simply ignore this guarantee when convenient.
If we could, Phlosphr, then an Assistant Attorney General could decide he didn’t like the way your were flirting with his girlfriend, and order you arrested and held without presenting any evidence at all. It’s that sort of society that our Constitution is designed to avoid.
Bricker- have they released any info regarding what this guy allegedly did? I.e. any significant steps that were taken, etc…
It seems to me that the administration screwed up by trying to put a US citizen in the military tribunal pathway. Naming him as an enemy combatant in my opinion was a huge tactical error.