Are there ten New Yorkers who have never heard about 9/11?
Doesn’t matter, since that is not the criteria for juror selection. The criteria is whether the juror can render a fair and impartial verdict based only on the evidence admitted at trial, despite any pre-trial publicity the juror may have seen. Dunno about New York, but it takes 12 for a jury in a criminal case in my state.
So why do they always ask if I know anything about the case during voir dire during jury selection?
Are there ten Americans who have never heard about 9/11? Are there ten adults in the Western world?
Yes, many more, but that’s not the question. Go up to Alaska and find some Inuits if you need to.
Everyone has heard about 9/11. However, besides Osama Bin Laden, I don’t think most of the American public knows most of the other actors. Hell, most of us do not know who Osama Bin Laden is.
I do not really know who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is. I know he was arrested somewhere in Pakistan and there is a picture of the guy in an old TV shirt, bleary eyed hairy guy looking into a camera.
I know that he was allegedly tortured by the USA government for information. (Bush and Cheney readily admit now after office.) Enough waterboarding, shocks to the balls and being forced to listen to Rod Stewart at full decible would cause anyone to break down and admit anything. The guy is an open book. I could be very fair with him. If there was proof that he was involved in 9/11 besides statements that he made under duress, then he deserves suitable punishment. But the man, and others in Gitmo who are still there, deserve a trial under the 6th Amendment, or be cut loose.
There are many criminal and civil trials with famous/infamous defendants. For example, everyone knew about Ted Bundy and his crimes. I have never been on a jury, but to be a juror, one must be impartial, and listen to only the evidence presented by the state, and the rebuttal and counter evidence of the defence.
The Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 was the worst domestic terrorist act before September 11, 2001. The cases of OKC and 9/11 are very similar except in size and scope. There are differences, but not much. How OKC and 9/11 are similiar…
**There was a conspiracy to commit a deadly act against the government of the United States and civilians. ** In OKC, the conspiracy was between three men, two men (McVeigh and Nichols) who committed the act and another man named Fortier who knew what was going to happen. There were probably 25 to 30 men in conspiracy in 9/11. Bin Laden, his lieutenants, and the 19 men who were killed doing the deed.
The act was not committed by a foreign government nor sanctioned by them. You cannot be a “enemy combatant” if you are not in league with a foreign government. The opinion of the experts, at least the opinion disiminated to the masses is that Al Quieda, an organization not a government was behind 9/11.
The OKC bombers **attacked federal property **(The Murrah Building). The 9/11people also **attacked federal property **(The Pentagon). Both attacks killed Federal employees. In OKC and 9/11, non federal employees (civilians) were also killed.
McVeigh, Nichols and Fortier received trials. Nichols even had to go through a state trial in Oklahoma (the feds only found him guilty of killing the federal officers and not the 160 or so civilians, the Okla. trial was justice for the 160.)
All were found guilty. McVeigh was put to death. Nichols is in a concrete tomb in ADX Florence Supermax and Fortier did 10 years and is now in Witness Protection with his wife. McVeigh’s/Nichol’s trial had to be moved to Denver, Colorado because of the raw emotions of the people of Oklahoma over what happened.
Why should the 9/11 defendants be any different? I do not like the idea that someone can be detained without trial by my government forever without the benefit of a trial or consul. To me, that is a slippery slope. To arrest, then detain someone while “throwing away the key” are not the values I learned about the judicial system in schools in the USA. In the future, who is next? Where are the Constitutional protections? If the Ku Klux Klan burn down a black church for example, should the KKK members be locked up in packing crates at a Naval Base in Cuba?
The Nazis were enemy combatants because they fought a war against the Allies, and committed war crimes as a result. Many Nazi leaders and functionaries were hanged after WWII as a result of their actions. However, the “War on Terror” has no ending and is not what we would traditonally consider a war. A nation cannot have a war against an individual or organizations, only governments.
They want to determine how much you may have heard, and whether that information would prevent you from being impartial.
That is one of the big myths of the American judicial system. “We are to be tried by an impartial jury.” This for the most part isn’t so.
What we get is 12 people that have made up their minds, but will allow themselves to “stand corrected” if the evidence isn’t all there."
Can he get a fair and impartial verdict in NYC?
Since this is evidently the real question, this is better suited for GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I would expect that a change of venue would be granted pretty much automatically.
(Nichols, by the way, was charged in Oklahoma City for the non-federal counts of murder, and a change of venue within the state was granted.)
[quote=“Frank, post:11, topic:546192”]
Has *New York State *shown any interest in trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (or anyone else involved in 9/11)?
Could he get one anywhere in the States ? 
Yes. Why couldn’t he?
Yeah, Americans have strong feelings about, you know, mass murder. But I think it’s not that hard to have a trial to figure out if this particular guy was involved in the particular mass murder in question.
Fair and impartial enough, yes. I think he’ll plead guilty, though.
France disagrees. France declares war against Al Qaeda.
[QUOTE=Captain Midnight;12668616
The act was not committed by a foreign government nor sanctioned by them. You cannot be a “enemy combatant” if you are not in league with a foreign government. The opinion of the experts, at least the opinion disiminated to the masses is that Al Quieda, an organization not a government was behind 9/11.
(snipped both ways)
[/QUOTE]
You can be a “enemy combatant” (and especially, an “unlawful combatant”) without belonging to an “official” army
I’m just saying, if there are concerns about the fairness of an NYC trial because NANWANWAN!!, then those concerns apply to the rest the States, as I don’t think Kansas feels any less raw about nanwanwan than New York City. It’s nanwanwan all over, brother.
Besides, the guy’s been tortured for years and was unhinged to begin with. At this point, I’d be surprised if he didn’t plead guilty to shooting Lincoln.
To paraphrase Judge Omar Noose in A Time To Kill, he can’t get a fair trial in New York City, and he can’t get one anywhere else in the US either.