The Scene of the Crime

I live here, and I would have been pissed if they hadn’t tried them at 500 Pearl. The GOP – they piss their pants when they have to confront a terrorist or serve in the military. They are a disgrace.

Fucking cowards (minus Bloomie.) It’s not like AQ have superpowers like Magneto or anything.

@blogenfreude: Jury selection will be interesting.

@ManchuCandidate: They don’t?

@SanFranLefty: Please don’t let it be me …

They’re gonna put a criminal on trial? Where the hell do they think we are, the U.S. of A.? Outrageous!

I just lerve the Vermont delegation to Congress:

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was one of the few lawmakers to release as statement praising the Holder move today.

“I have always believed that the nation’s federal courts are capable of trying high profile terrorism and national security cases,” he said. “They have proven time and time again to be up to the job.”

“I hope these cases will move forward promptly,” Leahy added. “By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system – a system respected around the world.”

@SanFranLefty: @blogenfreude: People in OKC were pissed when the McVeigh trial was moved to Denver, but there was no way to seat even a pretense of an unbiased jury in the state of Oklahoma.

I wonder if Kay Babe has the cojones to run a bit to the right of Goodhair/Badbrain on this one. He’s given her the opportunity to call him a chickenshit and say that there are plenty of Texans who’d love to the chance to sit on the jury and send those boys to Huntsville for their last meals.

/yee haw

Can’t tell players w/o scorecard — who’s the US Atty in SDNY?

@Jamie Sommers: Oh, that would be priceless if she did that.

@chicago bureau: Well, if they’re like NDCal, they’re still stuck with the Bush appointee.

@chicago bureau: Pheet Bharara.

Your choices are simple, they are war criminals, and you send them to the Hague to prosecute them, or they are criminal criminals, and you try them here, where we can sentence them to death, not that I believe in the death penalty, but these schmucks do. But what you cannot do, under US law and international law, is execute them by executive fiat, as they want to do.

These people are simply lawless.

I have a real question, as a lawyer, how can you try someone who has been tortured, held without trial and counsel, a US prosecutor in a US court with all the evidence rules and constitutional jurisprudence concerning coercive interrogation, how do they get past the illegal treatment these people have received up to this point?

They must have evidence that is not a “fruit of the poisonous tree,” they cannot introduce any admissions or confessions resulting from their illegal incarceration and torture, that much seems clear.

Is there a way to hold that their status has changed, that their prior incarceration was as military prisoners, not POWs, but as illegal combatants nevertheless subject to military law, and that with their indictment, their status changed, and as long as they are afforded their rights as criminal defendants after this status change, all is OK?

I could almost buy into that, if no evidence resulting from torture is introduced, and they have all the rights of criminal defendants from this point on, I could swallow that.

The worst thing about the Bush administrations decision to go rogue with these guantanamo prisoners, was that from the beginning it was plain that it would make legitimate criminal prosecution problematic, and as an American, I certainly did and do want to see them subjected to legal, proper, lawful prosecution.

I can’t wait to see Beck and Fox News organize protests advocating this guy be thrown to the crowd to be subject to mob execution. If they were to try him anywhere, it should be in the pit at the site of the WTC.

@FlyingChainSaw: Beck has been pretty much non-existent since his little “appendicitus” problem. Tertiary Syphillis is a hell of a disease.

@Promnight: Not to mention, the jury selection process alone will take years.

If They had treated this properly as a criminal act from the very beginning, instead of declaring War on some vague definition of Terror, and not used that as an excuse to inflict Their psychosexual and non-consensual sadistic inclinations upon their helpless “enemy combatants” line the pockets of their friends at Halliburton and Blackwater and such nefarious ilk, perhaps we’d all be treated to a more realistic airing of the dirty laundry behind the 9-11 attacks.

But obviously, that would be a laughable expectation from the likes of the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft/Gonzalez administration of justice.

@Promnight: “how can you try someone who has been tortured, held without trial and counsel, a US prosecutor in a US court with all the evidence rules and constitutional jurisprudence concerning coercive interrogation, how do they get past the illegal treatment these people have received up to this point?”

Ding ding ding – you have identified the problem.

You can’t.

Unless we’re going to toss the entire Constitution out the window in federal district court. Points to Hopey Unicorn for this dice toss. I hope they have something independently credible to use against KSM.

Pass the popcorn.

@SanFranLefty: Notice there are new, cleaned up photos of these guys? Look for new evidence elicited after Hopey’s We Dont Torture XO.

@Jamie Sommers: Kudos for “Goodhair/Badbrain.”

@SanFranLefty:

Actually, one of the favorite RW paranoid memes about the trials is that some group will decide to threaten NYC with an attack unless the suspects are released (apparently AQ has been watching old Dukes of Hazzard reruns or something).

I’ve got a similar concern – that if the trial starts to go badly for the government (eg, on the torture angle) that some of the ‘baggers would decide to have a “lynching”.

Way off topic: Hey JNOV and SFL, let’s whomp on those Spoiled Children today.