Who's Constitution is this?

The Obama Administration was wrong when Attorney General Holder elected to try terrorists in Federal court in New York City or for that matter anywhere in the United States. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 was created specifically to address the unique situation of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and received overwhelming bi-partisan support. In several rulings the Supreme Court signaled what would and would not be acceptable in the act. Attorney General Holder’s decision will have numerous long-term negative consequences both at home and abroad and I believe will weaken the Constitution and many long established rights e.g., Miranda, Habeas Corpus, representation during questioning and the right to a speedy trial to name only a few.
Before I lay out my arguments I will state for the record I am not an attorney, I don’t even play one on TV. Usually when I’m on TV I play a physician or college professor. but, I digress. My legal education comes from years of watching Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Alex and all of the various incarnations of Law and Order. If there is any attorney who is admitted to practice before the federal bar and especially if you have tried criminal cases in federal court, please write to me in care of this paper and tell me where my facts and or logic are wrong.
The following are the legal flaws and pitfalls I see in this decision. There are numerous other philosophical problems I choose not to pursue.
Attorney General Holder should have recused himself from making this decision. The Attorney General has at least two conflicts of interest. Before taking his current office as Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder was a senior partner in the Washington DC law firm of Covington & Burling. His firm is representing 17 terrorists pro bono (Providing legal services free of charge). Furthermore, in February of 2000, then Deputy Attorney General Holder engineered and pushed the pardon of 16 Puerto Rican FALN terrorists. The pardon was opposed by the FBI, the US Attorneys who prosecuted them and the NYPD officers maimed by them. I don’t think terrorists should be pardoned. I also think you shouldn’t decide how and where to prosecute people your firm still represents.
If these cases ever make it to a courtroom, I don’t believe a fair trial is possible. I think President Obama and Attorney General Holder made a fair trial by jury impossible when they GUARANTEED a conviction and execution. You might argue that all prosecutors guarantee convictions and it’s their way of showing confidence in their case. Agreed. However, Eric Holder is no ordinary prosecutor, he is the Attorney General of the United States. He didn’t make his guarantee at a news conference or in a TV interview. He gave his guarantee during SWORN TESTIMONY before the Senate Judiciary Committee. President Obama GUARANTEED a conviction and execution in a press conference. With a guarantee like that, when or if a conviction takes place, rightly or wrongly, our judicial system will immediately be labeled as a Kangaroo Court.
NOTE: Re-read the previous two paragraphs. It seems the Attorney General is playing both sides of the fence. Defending terrorists on the one hand and guaranteeing conviction and execution on the other.
But, I’m already getting ahead of myself. You cannot guarantee how a presiding judge is going to rule in what will surely be a large number of pre-trial motions and hearings. When Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, "the Blind Sheik," was arrested, tried and eventually convicted after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Manhattan and the NYPD bent over backwards to cross every "T" and dot every "I", as they should have. Even so, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals had to reinstate the indictment after the presiding judge threw it out. Considering the importance of these trials, I think justice is better served by a three judge Military Commission than by one, possibly rogue, judge.
The cases against the subjects of this new round of criminal terrorist trials will not be nearly so neat and tidy as the case against "The Blind Sheikh". These men were captured on the field of battle. There weren’t any Miranda warnings given and until the US Supreme Court stepped in, no habeas corpus either. Habeas corpus is a Writ seeking relief from unlawful detention. Because all of these men have been held at Guantanamo since their capture I don’t think they’ll get a speedy trial under any definition of a speedy trial. Finally, whether or not you believe the interrogations which took place were or were not torture, none of them had lawyers present during questioning.
These men were captured on the battlefield so initially the rules of evidence, Miranda, habeas corpus, the right to a speedy trial and the right to representation were ignored. If these men are now tried and convicted and if their convictions are allowed to stand, what does that say?
It says that yours and my Miranda rights, habeas corpus and right to representation and our 6th amendment right to a speedy trial can be ignored as well.
On to Discovery; the legal process where both sides show what evidence they have and reveal their witness list. How much of our intelligence gathering techniques, technology and sources will the government be compelled to disclose to insure a fair trial?
Oh, and then there’s the witness list, this would include the names of CIA interrogators and case officers. It might even include undercover informants within Al Qaeda or other governments’ undercover intelligence agents. I’m sure the Mossad (The Israeli Secret Service) would love to have their agents covers on the front page of the New York Times or on CNN. If we’re lucky none of this evidence will be produced, but then without evidence, there can’t be a trial, and without a trial there’s no conviction or execution.
And then there’s jury selection. In this case I believe the jury can go to either of two extremes. It will either be impossible to find an impartial jury or in spite of Attorney General Holder and President Obama’s assurances to the contrary we could get a hung jury or worse yet an acquittal. Jury’s sometimes goober. Does anyone remember that guy who played football for USC and the Buffalo Bills, I think his name was O.J. Simpson.
We went through years of judicial, political and legislative wrangling to get to a solution of the problem of Guantanamo detainees. The overwhelmingly bi-partisan solution was the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Why are we now trashing that solution?
Does anyone out there, besides Attorney General Holder and President Obama see an upside to this?
In my opinion Attorney General Holder’s decision is illogical and criminally irresponsible.