By: William Galberson NYT
A day after the Supreme Court’s ruling granting detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal court, military defense lawyers said they planned to use the decision to mount new attacks on the government’s war crimes prosecutions that could stall or stop trials.
The new attack on the military commission system at Guantánamo will directly challenge a public declaration by the Justice Department after the ruling Thursday. The department said that detainees have numerous legal protections and that “military commission trials will therefore continue to go forward.”
The Supreme Court did not directly address the viability of the military commissions in its ruling, which said detainees have a constitutional right to challenge their detentions through habeas corpus cases.
But several constitutional law specialists said Friday that such broad challenges from detainees facing war crimes charges could, at a minimum, tie up the military commissions in years of court battles that might eventually lead back to the Supreme Court.
“It is an open question whether the military commissions, as they currently exist, satisfy the requirements of the Constitution,” said Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University.
The military lawyers said they would use the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling to argue that if detainees have habeas rights they are also entitled to other constitutional protections. They say the Constitution would bar the planned trials, asserting that legal procedures at Guantánamo violate basic legal protections. The lawyers cited commission rules that permit hearsay and evidence derived by coercion as examples of commission procedures that they argued would not be permitted by the Constitution.
Lee ADDS: These Defense Attornies do not see terrorists that have sworn to kill Americans and, either actually killed some of our military, or were caught attempting to do so, as worthy of being tried! In fact these attornies want them released!
My only thought about these attornies is..FOR SHAME!
