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Administration's New Plan For Detainee Trials: More of the Same

By TChris, Section War on Terror
Posted on Wed Jul 26, 2006 at 05:59:32 AM EST
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by TChris

Intent on circumventing the Supreme Court's pronouncement that detainees are entitled to meaningful trials, the Bush administration is drafting legislation that would rig the trials in the government's favor. Hearsay would be acceptable proof and defendants could be excluded from their own trials. Coerced confessions would be admissible unless the judge thought they were "unreliable."

Rather than requiring a speedy trial for enemy combatants, the draft proposal says they "may be tried and punished at any time without limitations." Defendants could be held until hostilities are completed, even if found not guilty by a commission.

In other words, the administration wants to continue business as usual: indefinite detentions that may eventually lead to a secret trial with no right to confront an accuser.

To shield itself from the Geneva Conventions, the administration's bill would proclaim that the Conventions are not a source of judicially enforceable rights.

"This draft shows that the executive branch doesn't think the Supreme Court got the questions on the Geneva Conventions right in Hamdan," said John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkley, who as a Justice Department lawyer helped draft the president's original order establishing the military commissions.

Actually, the Supreme Court thought that Yoo and the others responsible for creating the commissions didn't get it right. The administration simply doesn't want to comply with Hamdan, so its hoping to codify the procedure that the Court condemned in that decision.

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    Administration's New Plan For Detainee Trials: More of the Same | 2 comments (2 topical)
    Re: Administration's New Plan For Detainee Trials: (none / 0) (#1)
    by Molly Bloom on Wed Jul 26, 2006 at 10:01:27 AM EST
    Welcome to the authoritarian state. Sinclair Lewis to the contrary, it can happen here (see also Zappa, Frank).

    Re: Administration's New Plan For Detainee Trials: (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sun Jul 30, 2006 at 02:52:30 PM EST
    These guys are *nagging* the Constitution to death. Every time one of his perversions fails, he introduces the same damned thing again. For example, the Paris Hilton Shouldn't Pay Taxes bill -- up one more tme, this time to destroy the possibility of a minimum wage increase. Chinese water torture has nothing on the Bush legislative agenda.

    Administration's New Plan For Detainee Trials: More of the Same | 2 comments (2 topical)