What an abdication of citizen responsibility!  
Not that they care what I think, but I would hope that someone they do care about would point out to them that they have weakened the rule of law they were chosen to uphold.

The Kafkaesque treatment that Padilla has suffered is a warning to all Americans. Such are the conditions that can be meted out to anyone--whether a US citizen or not. According to the legal theory developed by the administration, constitutional rights must be sacrificed in the name of "security" in the "war on terror."

Padilla's conviction occurs within the context of a vast expansion of executive powers to spy on the population, deny basic democratic rights, and employ torture on prisoners held throughout the world.

As with every aspect of the administration's assault on democratic rights, the treatment of Jose Padilla has provoked no serious criticism from the Democratic Party. To the extent that there have been mild complaints within the media and political establishment, it has been from the standpoint that the government has "overreached" in the "war on terror" and thereby damaged US imperialist interests around the world.

The conviction of Padilla comes less than two weeks after the Democrats helped pass a bill gutting the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and expanding the ability of the president to spy on the American people. (...).

Jose Padilla's personal tragedy is a manifestation of the deep and irreversible decay of American democracy.

Maybe they went on their gut feeling and emotion, not on the evidence or the law as instructed.

I think they were corrupted. Bought off. If not with money then with with delusions pumped into their heads.

Delusions as serious as Jose Padilla's.

They lost. You lost. I lost. The country lost. The government lost. Padilla lost.

And the whole world lost.

I just had a sex offense felony trial where ALL of the evidence against my client was circumstantial at best.

All the jury seemed to focus on were the snippets of evidence that tended to show my client to be lacking in good judgment.

The jury was just looking for something - anything! - no matter how slight, to put my client away for a long time.  Why?  Because The People had already labeled and indicted her as a multi-count sex offender.  The jury needed only to rubberstamp the verdict of public opinion that had already been rendered.

So toxic are some labels that a docile populace will blithely follow The People's lead and assume the worst on nothing more than misplaced trust.

After all, where have we all been these last 6 1/2 years?

What still seems incredible to me that was blithely accepted in this country was the  detention of an American citizen on American soil on the mere say so of the President.

After that, nothing can be trusted in America.

Along with torture, this was the sign that the nation had gone collectively insane after 9/11.

The discussion of the trial and the jury verdict can be interesting, I don't know, but I can NEVER get past the meek acceptance of Padilla be detained indefinitely by the President.

I do think he should not have been convicted, because he was tortured and the judge should have thrown the accusations out and ordered that Padilla be immediately released and given post-traumatic care for the torture he received while in government detention.

Charges then should have been filed against everyone involved with handling Padilla, including the President who ordered he be held indefinitely. We should be having a discussion on the jury verdicts of the alleged torturers instead of a discussion on a verdict in the Padilla case.

Padilla lawyer on the document referenced above by Jim.

ANDREW PATEL: That was the government's -- you know, when you actually look at this document and -- it is clear that it was -- there were two or three different kinds of inks. If you look at the handwriting on the first page and the last page, they don't match. Even things like, in the United States we will write a date, you know, month, date, year, and in Europe and the Middle East they write date, month, year. There are actually two dates on this form: one on the first page, one on the last page. One is in the European style, one is in the American style. We referred to this document as a, quote, "questioned document," unquote. The jury has spoken on that issue.

on the wiretaps

Well, there were 300,000 intercepts over a period of approximately ten years. Of those, approximately 14,000 were considered to be, quote, "pertinent." The government introduced about just under 130 conversations or parts of 130 conversations. Now, of that 300,000, Jose's voice is heard on seven. And there are an additional dozen or so conversations in which other people are talking about him. So in a massive electronic surveillance involving home phones being intercepted, cell phones being intercepted, fax machines being intercepted, bugs in people's homes, we have a grand total of twenty-one calls that have anything to do with Jose, out of a grand total of 300,000 interceptions. Your audience can do the math. The result is, you know, just barely a pin drop in this tidal wave of sound that was recorded.

Look whose hands the law has been in the last few years....the hands of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gates, and Gonzalez.  I'll take the law in the hands of your average American knucklehead over those bastards every day of the week.  

If the law applied to the government it would be one thing, but the story of Jose Padilla teaches us they are above the law, it does not apply.  

The jury was not only wrong, but at best lazy and callous, perhaps really stupid and ignorant and very likely corrupt? And you guys make these judgments without the jury getting a trial where you are presented WITH EVIDENCE to support your judgments which you confidently reach despite not having spent one second in the courtroom during the trial during which the jury heard hours and hours of testimony.

  Where is a single attempt  even to assert that the evidence was insufficient for a rational trier of fact to conclude that any essential element of any offense of conviction was not proven? where is any support for the suposition that the jury did not comprehend the law it was to apply to the facts it found? You do understand that the judge read the instructions to the jury and the lawyers on both sides had closing arguments in which they explained the applicable law and argued for or against the proposition the evidence was sufficient to establish the elements?

You then when questioned throw out a feeble attempt at diversion with...

Where is a single attempt  even to assert that the evidence was insufficient for a rational trier of fact to conclude that any essential element of any offense of conviction was not proven?

... when you know, or should if you hade read the post, that "jury [came] back with a guilty verdict after a day and a half of deliberation .... It takes longer than that to comprehend the jury instructions. The instructions in Padilla's case were 42 pages long"

  I didn't evade it all. I called the conclusion a transparent attack based on no evidence. the jury heard the jury instructions from the judge and the lawyers gave closing arguments. 11 hours of deliberations in no way establishes the jury did not understand the law of the case.

The evidence MAY HAVE been insufficient for a rational trier of fact to conclude that any essential element of any offense of conviction was not proven.

  And it may not have been. So since you don't have a clue about the evidence or the law and . Who  are you to attack the jury's conclusion? More tellingly, do you not grasp the irony of peole here immediately jumping on the bandwagon-- without any evidence whatsoever--  accusing a jury which attended a long trial and heard all the evidence, argument and instructions of reaching its decision too quickly, based on nothing more than a complaint  from a highly partial person?  

It would have been nice if the JURY had taken the time considered the evidence.

But they did not even make an attempt at appearing to have taken the time to consider the evidence, and if you any kind of a lawyer you'd know that.

   You were not in the jury room either. so, your judgment about its deliberations is based on nothing but prejudice. you don't know what evidence the jury considered persuasive and what evidence it did not. A lot of ground can be covered in 11 hours and what evidence tending to cast doubt on the verdict do you know the jury failed to consider?

This "trial", if if it even deserves that designation, was a sham and a show from the beginning to blind you and the rest of the gullible neocons and keep on selling you the "war on terror" fantasy.

  People making such accusations should know enough to say the jury acted improperly because it did __ and _ is improper because __.

 Otherwise it's worse than sheer nonsense.

  The ONLY thing anyone has cited here despite all the comments is the amount of time it took to reach the verdict. That in no way allows the conclusion that the jurors failed to consider the evidence, did not understand the relevant law or acted out of any improper motive. 11 hours of deliberations is just easily explained as indicative that all of the jurors individually determined that the case against the defendants was very strong and they found early unanimity existed and they could find no reason to entertain doubt. Not all cases are close cases WHEN YOU HAVE SAT THROUGH WEEKS OF TESTIMONY.

1. I haven't followed this case as closely as I should have, but given what I've read, it does sound like the jury acted improperly.  
   
2. It sounds like extremely (and inappropriately) prejudicial evidence was allowed in...errors that will be brought up by Padilla's next lawyers.
   
3. I disagree with the commenters here who are disparaging juries in general.  In my experience jurors take their jobs very seriously.  This jury, it seems, did not.
   
4. If Padilla had been acquitted by a jury that acted improperly, I would be taking exactly the same position I am taking now.