Mike Hawash entered a not guilty plea yesterday in the Oregon terror case. Trial is set for October 1. An op-ed column today examines whether the Government's use of a material witness warrant against Hawash constituted an abuse of the material witness statute.

In order to obtain the material witness warrant against Hawash, the Government had to tell the Court that Hawash was a flight risk and that his testimony was needed before the grand jury.

Hawash was not brought to testify before the grand jury. After five weeks in custody, and one day before his scheduled release, he was charged as a defendant in an existing case.

Hawash's case raises some very troubling questions: If the government had a basis for criminally charging Hawash all along, why didn't it offer that as the reason for his detention, rather than invoking the material witness statute? Was the reason for detaining Hawash as a material witness so that the government could use the intimidating confinement to obtain information, while avoiding the basic protections that are given criminal defendants? What motivated the government's conduct?

....For five weeks, unless he was scheduled to be somewhere else, the government kept him in solitary confinement in an 8-foot by 12-foot cell for 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whenever he left his cell, prison guards would strip-search him and place him in chains before he was moved about. Hawash could call home only once a week and only received a visit from his wife or attorney three times a week. What interest has been asserted by the government to justify this deprivation?

Lawyer Brian Lehman, author of this commentary, makes the argument that the Government's use of the material witness warrant in Hawash's situation (and others similarly situated) may violate the Fourth Amendment.