Padilla Convicted

[Nbadan]

Padilla Is Convicted in Terrorism Case


MIAMI (AP) -- Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration's zeal to stop homegrown terror.

Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible sentences of life in prison if convicted of all three charges in the case.

The three are accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense contended they were trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with relief and humanitarian aid.

Padilla was first detained in 2002 because of much more sensational accusations. The Bush administration portrayed Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, as a committed terrorist who was part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the U.S. The administration called his detention an important victory in the war against terrorism, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The charges brought in civilian court in Miami, however, were a pale shadow of those initial claims in part because Padilla, 36, was interrogated about the plot when he was held as an enemy combatant for 3 1/2 years in military custody with no lawyer present and was not read his Miranda rights.

AP (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PADILLA_TERROR_CHARGES?SITE=CATOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-08-16-14-27-26)

[Nbadan]

During the trial, prosecutors played more than 70 intercepted phone calls among the defendants for jurors, including seven that featured Padilla, 36. He is a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam originally arrested as a suspect in a "dirty bomb" plot.

FBI agent John Kavanaugh testified that the calls were made in code, which Padilla used to discuss traveling overseas to fight with Islamic militants, along with side trips to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

In closing arguments, Padilla's lawyers argued he never spoke in code. His voice is heard on only seven of 300,000 taped conversations. Watch a recap of the Padilla case »

They also tried to rebut a key piece of prosecution evidence -- an al Qaeda terrorist training camp application or "mujahedeen data form."

A covert CIA officer -- who testified in disguise at Padilla's trial -- said he was given the form in Afghanistan, and a fingerprint expert found Padilla's prints on the form, prosecutors said.

But Michael Caruso, Padilla's defense attorney, said the prints on the form were not consistent with someone who filled out the document.

"Jose at some point handled the document, but did not fill out the form," Caruso said.

Padilla was originally arrested on dramatic allegations that he planned to set off radioactive "dirty bombs" in the United States. But the current charges are not related to those accusations, and prosecutors did not present the "dirty bomb" plot to the jury.

Neither were jurors told that Padilla was held in a Navy brig for 3½ years without charges before his indictment in the Miami case.

Before trial, his lawyers tried to argue that he was no longer mentally competent to stand trial after years of solitary confinement and abuse -- allegations the government strongly denied.

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/16/padilla.verdict/index.html)

3.5 years of solitary confinement and torture will make you say some crazy shit....

[FromWayDowntown]

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/16/padilla.verdict/index.html)

3.5 years of solitary confinement and torture will make you say some crazy shit....

I thought the tapes that were played for the jury were made before Padilla was incarcerated, which wouldn't make that evidence (at least) the product of any solitary confinement or torture.

:wtf

[boutons_]

The Real Verdict on Jose Padilla

By Jenny S. Martinez
Friday, August 17, 2007; A23

The conclusion of Jose Padilla's criminal trial in a federal court yesterday shows that waging the "war on terror" does not require giving up our constitutional values or substituting military rule for the rule of law. The jury's guilty verdict should be appealed, but the verdict on the Constitution is in: We should keep it.

Padilla is a U.S. citizen who was arrested in Chicago in May 2002, pursuant to a warrant to testify before a grand jury. He was held in civilian custody in New York for a month, but on the eve of a hearing in federal court, President Bush declared Padilla an "enemy combatant." At that point, Padilla was whisked out of the civilian justice system and imprisoned in a South Carolina military brig. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft held a news conference to announce that the government had thwarted a plot by Padilla to set off a radiological "dirty bomb" in an American city.

Anyone who has seen a cop show in recent decades knows what rights people in America usually have when arrested: the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Not Padilla.

For nearly two years, Jose Padilla was denied all access to his lawyers, his family and the court system. The Bush administration claimed that he could be held without trial until the end of its "war on terror." Allowing Padilla to talk to a lawyer or know that a court was considering his case, the government argued, would threaten national security. http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif Meanwhile, the government was working to create a relationship of complete "dependency" between Padilla and his interrogators, who were busy trying to torture a confession out of him.

As court filings indicate, Padilla was allegedly subjected to sleep deprivation, stress positions and extreme temperatures. Worse, he was held without human contact, without a clock or even natural light -- with no way to know how quickly or slowly time was passing. When he was removed from his cell to visit a dentist, goggles and earmuffs were placed on him. Psychologists have long reported that extreme sensory deprivation is one of the quickest ways to drive people mad -- and make them willing to confess to anything.

The case challenging the constitutionality of Padilla's detention was in the federal courts for several years. It reached the Supreme Court in 2004, at which point the government finally allowed him to speak to a lawyer. But the high court did not review the merits; instead, it ruled on a technicality that the case should have been brought in South Carolina, not New York. Litigation continued and nearly reached the Supreme Court again in late 2005. By then, the administration had begun soft-pedaling the "dirty bomb" story, which it described as "loose talk" rather than an imminent plot. It put forward a new theory: Padilla was planning to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas. The government also argued that he could be detained as an "enemy combatant" because, it alleged, he had been in Afghanistan during the U.S. bombing campaign in late 2001.

http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif http://spurstalk.com/forums/images/smilies/smilol.gif

Two business days before the government's brief was due in the Supreme Court, the administration switched tactics again. Fearful that the court would rule that a U.S. citizen arrested in the United States could not constitutionally be detained forever without criminal trial, the government announced that Padilla would be tried in a federal court in Miami. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit noted, the government's actions made it appear that it was trying to evade Supreme Court review.

The charges brought in Miami contained none of the allegations about the dirty-bomb plot, the apartment buildings or even Padilla's presence in Afghanistan in late 2001. Instead, the government alleged that Padilla had conspired in the 1990s to provide support to overseas jihadists in Bosnia and Chechnya. Commentators called even this weaker case notably thin, but Padilla was found guilty.

Padilla's fate, pending appeal, remains unknown. Also unknown is whether the courts will ever definitively rule on the legality of the government's mistreatment of Padilla during his four years of military detention. But some things are certain:

The trial showed that our federal courts are perfectly capable of dealing with terrorism cases. A federal judge presided over the five-month trial of Padilla and his co-defendants with great care for both the rights of the defendants and for national security. The Bush administration has claimed since Sept. 11 that the federal courts cannot be trusted with terrorism matters. It has argued that we should scrap our centuries-old constitutional protections and replace our system of checks and balances with one awarding the executive complete discretion to lock up whomever he wants, for however long he deems appropriate. The Founders rejected that kind of arbitrary and oppressive power. And the federal court in Florida has shown how weak the administration's case for abandoning the Constitution really is.

The writer, a law professor at Stanford University, represented Jose Padilla before the Supreme Court in 2004 and is his attorney in a civil case regarding his treatment while detained.

=============

It's one thing for assholes like Clanny, WC, and Yoni to say it's OK for dubya to fuck over any human being unlucky enough not to be a US citizen, but here dubya is fucking over a human being who is a US citizen. Padilla sure seems to be guility of something, but the way dubya DoJ has fucked over his rights as a US citizen is bullshit. The fact that the DoJ kept changing the charges and changing which courts he would be tried in shows them to be both incompetent and without a firm case against Padilla, just like they don't have firm cases against Gitmo victims.

dubya can declare any US citizen an "enemy combatant" for any reason and fuck him over in exactly the same way.

Welcome to Repug America, ugly as sin.

[Nbadan]

I thought the tapes that were played for the jury were made before Padilla was incarcerated, which wouldn't make that evidence (at least) the product of any solitary confinement or torture.

:wtf

so your saying they convicted him solely on the basis of 7 phone conversations?

[FromWayDowntown]

so your saying they convicted him solely on the basis of 7 phone conversations?

I wasn't on the jury and didn't hear all of the evidence, but from the reports that I've read, it sure doesn't appear that Padilla was convicted because he admissions beaten out of him. People have been (and will be convicted) on of far more serious charges on the strength of one phone conversation. But here, the government introduced (apparently) inculpatory documents that had his prints on them. Whether the prints are valid or not, who knows; whether the document was actually inculpatory is, I understand, the subject of some dispute. But in any event, the jury heard that evidence and was left to decide for itself whether Padilla committed the crimes charged; it found that he did.

That is an entirely different issue than whether Padilla's constitutional rights were infringed during his incarceration or whether a declaration that an American citizen is an enemy combatant is sufficient to warrant deprivation of fundamental rights. With respect to many constitutional rights, though, Padilla would have to show that the deprivation was somehow the basis for the conviction. Since the government tried Padilla on charges that had nothing to do with the purported dirty bomb plot, I'm hard-pressed to believe that Padilla can show harm to him in the criminal case stemming from his lost constitutional rights. Padilla's recourse, it seems to me, is most likely to be found in a section 1983 action against the government for those violations.

[boutons_]

"Padilla would have to show that the deprivation was somehow the basis for the conviction."

All he has to show is his rights were violated, no matter whether he's convicted, or not. Two separate issues.

However, if violation of his rights produced evidence against him, then that's like the Jefferson case where the court rule the DoJ violated his rights by invading his Congressional office and his home to obtain evidence.

[FromWayDowntown]

All he has to show is his right were violated, no matter whether he's convicte, or not. Two separate issues.

It's been a while since I've studied criminal procedure, but my general recollection is that in order to reverse a conviction on the basis of a constitutional violation, the party appealing the conviction must demonstrate harm emanating from the violation. Generally speaking, such harm is established by proof that but for the violation, he would not have been convicted -- for instance, someone who is not Mirandized, confesses, and then is convicted solely on the strength of the confession would be able to show harm from the violation; by contrast, someone who is not Mirandized, confesses, and then is convicted after a trial during which the confession is admitted along with substantial physical evidence demonstrating guilt would likely be unable to show that harm. The criminal justice system would be hopelessly bogged down if every single constitutional violation necessitated the reversal of a conviction and remand for a new trial.

I'll readily admit that there are likely some violations that are deemed fundamental and sufficient, standing alone, to warrant reversals; but I can't name them for you now and I suspect that those things tend to be more structural with regard to the conduct of a trial (things like deprivation of the right to counsel at trial, deprivation of the right to cross-examine witnesses) or in the charging process (violations occuring in grand jury proceedings).

[Nbadan]

I've read, it sure doesn't appear that Padilla was convicted because he admissions beaten out of him

It doesn't appear that way, but solitary confinement and phychological mind-games can be a bitch too...it appears that the main evidence against Padilla was his Al-Queda job application........

[FromWayDowntown]

It doesn't appear that way, but solitary confinement and phychological mind-games can be a bitch too...it appears that the main evidence against Padilla was his Al-Queda job application........

Sure, but show me how the solitary confinement and psychological mind games resulted in a conviction.

Even you're admitting that there's significant physical evidence against Padilla that existed before he was incarcerated. I might be slow on the draw, but if the evidence existed before he was incarcerated, I'm not sure how the circumstances of his incarceration created evidence that convicted him.

Are you actually rooting for guys like Padilla to get off? I'm no fan of this Administration and I'm a rather consistent supporter of protecting civil rights and liberties, but it doesn't appear that Padilla had his conviction beaten out of him. As a result, I'm not sure why Padilla becomes a rallying cry for those who oppose this Administration -- there are plenty of miscarriages of justice to cite to.

[Nbadan]

Sure, but show me how the solitary confinement and psychological mind games resulted in a conviction.

Show me that they didn't....

[FromWayDowntown]

Show me that they didn't....

Good try. That's Padilla's burden to establish that it affected the conviction, not the government's burden to prove that it did not.

So, show me that they did. . . . .

At that, so long as the evidence used to convict him -- an al Queda application and telephone calls, it appears -- wasn't the product of his incarceration, I'd think disproving harm to Padilla would actually be a rather easy task. If you can show me that Padilla's conviction was based on something he said or did while incarcerated (an admission or a confession), I'll listen; but for now, it doesn't appear that any such thing happened.

Like I say, Padilla is not without recourse for such egregious constitutional violations, but those violations strike me as highly unlikely to reverse this conviction.

[Nbadan]

I still counter that the case from a prosecutorial stand-point against Padilla was very weak, plus there are indications that the jury may have influenced by a sense of nationalism to convict and the use of the 10-year old Bin Laden tape, which had no relevance to this case may be enough grounds for a appeal....this article makes these points eloquently…..

August 19, 2007


Jose Padilla’s conviction on terrorism charges on August 16 was a victory, not for justice, but for the US Justice (sic) Department’s theory that a US citizen can be convicted, not because he committed a terrorist act but for allegedly harboring aspirations to commit such an act. By agreeing with the Justice (sic) Department’s theory, the incompetent Padilla Jury delivered a deadly blow to the rule of law and opened Pandora’s Box.

Anglo-American law is a human achievement 800 years in the making. Over centuries law was transformed from a weapon in the hands of government into a shield of the people from unaccountable power. The Padilla Jury’s verdict turned law back into a weapon.

The jury, of course, had no idea of what was at stake. It was a patriotic jury that appeared in court with one row of jurors dressed in red, one in white, and one in blue It was a jury primed to be psychologically and emotionally manipulated by federal prosecutors desperate for a conviction for which there was little, if any, supporting evidence. For the jury, patriotism required that they strike a blow for America against terrorism. No member of this jury was going to return home to accusations of letting off a person who has been portrayed as a terrorist in the US media for five years.

The “evidence” against Padilla consists of three items: (1) seven intercepted telephone conversations, (2) a 10-year old non-relevant video of Osama bin Laden, and (3) an alleged application to a mujahideen (not terrorist) training camp with Padilla’s fingerprints. We will examine each in turn.

The International Herald Tribune and Associated Press reported in detail on the telephone intercepts (June 19, 2007):

“Accused al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla was never overheard using purported code words for violent jihad in intercepted telephone conversations and spoke often about his difficulties in learning Arabic while studying in Egypt, the lead FBI case agent testified Tuesday. The questioning of FBI Agent James T. Kavanaugh by Padilla attorney Michael Caruso focused on seven intercepted telephone calls on which Padilla’s voice is heard mostly talking about his marriage and his studies but never about Islamic extremism. . . . Caruso asked Kavanaugh if Padilla ever was heard using what prosecutors say were code words for violent jihad . . . ‘No, he does not,’ Kavanaugh replied. . . . Caruso asked Kavanaugh if Padilla was ever overheard discussing jihad training. ‘No jihad training that I’ve seen,’ Kavanaugh said. . . . ‘He’s not referring to anything here but studying Arabic, correct? Study means study, right?’ Caruso asked. ‘That’s what they’re talking about,’ Kavanaugh testified.” < FBI agent says Padilla doesn’t use jihad code on tapes, Associated Press, June 19, 2007>

Despite the FBI’s testimony that the intercepted telephone messages contained no incriminating evidence, the “patriotic” jury accepted the federal prosecutor’s unsupported accusation that there were hidden code words in the message indicating that Padilla was a terrorist. After all, who but a terrorist would want to learn Arabic?

The video of bin Laden had no relevance whatsoever to the charges in the case. The video is 10-years old and makes no reference to any of the defendants. Moreover, none of the defendants were accused of ever being in contact with bin Laden. The only purpose of the video was to arouse in jurors fear, anger, and disturbing memories associated with September 11, 2001. The fact that the judge let prosecutors sway a fearful and vengeful patriotic jury with emotion and passion rather than evidence is obviously grounds for appeal.

Whoriskey reports that in their closing arguments prosecutors mentioned al-Qaeda more than 100 times and urged jurors to think of al-Qaeda and groups alleged to be affiliated with it as an international murder conspiracy. Padilla “trained to kill,”’ Assistant US Attorney Brian Frazier misinformed the jury in his closing statement.

Who Padilla wished to kill was never identified, but according to the prosecutors he had been wanting to kill persons unknown since 1998. Padilla was convicted for harboring alleged intentions, not for committing any acts. Indeed, no harmful acts are charged to Padilla. The incompetent jury fell for the prosecutors’ wild tale of a murder conspiracy many years old that had no results.

As Andrew Cohen put it, Padilla and the two co-defendants were convicted on the charge of “terrorist-wannabes” on the basis of “evidence that federal authorities did not believe amounted to a crime when it was gathered back before 2001.” Cohen concludes: “it’s further proof that if you can convince an American jury that a man in the dock had anything to do with al-Qaeda, you can pretty much bank on a conviction no matter how tenuous the evidence” (washingtonpost.com, August 16, 2007).]

The training camp application form is as suspect as any evidence can be. Moreover, the prosecution had no evidence that Padilla actually attended such a camp. Padilla was held illegally for 3.5 years and tortured. At any time during his illegal detention and torture, Padilla could have been handed a form, thus tainting it with his fingerprints.

Amy Goodman, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty, the Christian Science Monitor and others have described how US interrogators abused Padilla and destroyed his mind. To expect a person as badly tortured and abused as Padilla to retain the wits not to touch a piece of paper handed to him, or forced into his hands, is unreasonable.

When Padilla was arrested five years ago in 2002, the US government charged that he was about to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a US city that would kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans. The story was a total lie, a fabrication designed to keep the fear level high after 9/11 in order to keep support for the Bush regime’s wars and domestic police state. None of the charges on which Padilla was illegally held, during those years before the US Supreme Court intervened and ordered the Bush regime to release Padilla or bring him to trial, were part of the charges on which Padilla was tried.

There is little doubt that Padilla’s conviction, and probably also the convictions of the two co-defendants, is a terrible injustice. But the damage done goes far beyond the damage to the defendants. What the red, white, and blue “Padilla Jury” has done is to overthrow the US Constitution and give us the rule of men.

The US Constitution and Anglo-American legal tradition prevent indictments, much less convictions, based on a prosecutor’s theory that a person wanted to commit a crime in the past or might want to in the future. Padilla has harmed no one. There is no evidence that he made an agreement with any party to harm anyone whether for money or ideology or any reason. The FBI testified that the telephone calls were innocuous. The bin Laden video was evidence of nothing pertaining to the defendants. The piece of paper, alleged to be a personnel form recovered from an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan is nothing but a piece of paper and an assertion.

As Lawrence Stratton and I demonstrated in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000), the protective features of law had been seriously eroded prior to the Bush regime’s assault on civil liberty in the name of “the war on terror.” The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights rest on Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone explained law as the protective principles against tyranny–habeas corpus, due process, attorney-client privilege, no crime without intent, no retroactive law, no self-incrimination.

Jeremy Bentham claimed that these protective principles were outmoded in a democracy in which the people controlled the government and no longer had reasons to fear it. The problem with Blackstone’s “Rights of Englishmen,” Bentham said, is that these civil liberties needlessly limit the government’s power and, thus, its ability to protect citizens from crime. Bentham wanted to preempt criminal acts by arresting those likely to commit crimes in advance, before the budding criminals entered into a life of crime. Bentham, like the Bush regime, the “Padilla Jury,” and the Republican Federalist Society, did not understand that when law becomes a weapon, liberty dies regardless of the form of government. If they do understand, they prefer unaccountable government power to individual liberty.

The incompetent “Padilla Jury” has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system who now wield the powers that Bentham wanted to give them.

The Padilla case was the way the Bush Justice (sic) Department implemented its strategy for taking away the legal principles that protect American citizens. Padilla is an American citizen. He was denied habeas corpus and his rights to an attorney and due process. He was tortured in an attempt to coerce him into self-incrimination. In treating Padilla in these ways, the US Department of Justice (sic) violated both the US Constitution and federal law. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Justice (sic) Department committed far more crimes than did Padilla.

By the time the Supreme Court finally intervened, Padilla was universally known as the demonized “dirty bomber,” an “enemy combatant” who was arrested before he could set off a radioactive bomb in a US city. The Injustice Department could now simultaneously convict Padilla and enshrine Benthamite law simply by appealing to fear and patriotism. And that is what happened.

Under Benthamite law, the individual has no rights. The new calculus is “the greatest good for the greatest number” as determined by the wielders of power. On the basis of this new law, not written by Congress but invented by the Injustice Department and made precedent by the “Padilla Jury” verdict, the US can lock up people based on the percentage of crime committed by their race, gender, income class, or ethnic group.

Under Benthamite law, people can be arrested and prosecuted for thought crimes. Under Benthamite law, it is the government that protects the people, not the Constitution and Bill of Rights that protect the individual. Benthamite law makes “advocacy speech,” for example, a call for the overthrow of the US government, upheld in the 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio, a serious federal crime.

The “Padilla Jury” has opened Pandora’s Box. Unless the conviction is overturned on appeal, American liberty died in the “Padilla Jury’s” verdict.

Link (http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/)

The final word.

:hat

[FromWayDowntown]

All of those points have nothing whatsoever to do with the constitutional issues that you were complaining about earlier in this thread.

If the evidence is insufficient to support the conviction, it will likely be overturned -- that's basic appellate practice. But that's substantially different than suggesting that the conviction was a product of his deprivation of counsel or his extended incarceration before trial. You conflate those principles, dan; they're entirely different bases for reversing a conviction.

There, and you see -- I deprived you of the final word as well.

:hat

[Spurminator]

Show me that they didn't....


The foundation of every NBADan theory.

[Yonivore]

3.5 years of solitary confinement and torture will make you say some crazy shit....
So will a fucked up adherence to Islamo-fascism. It'll make you do some crazy shit too.

[Yonivore]

It doesn't appear that way, but solitary confinement and phychological mind-games can be a bitch too...it appears that the main evidence against Padilla was his Al-Queda job application........
Particularly since he was behaving as though he got the "job," for which he had applied.

[Nbadan]

All of those points have nothing whatsoever to do with the constitutional issues that you were complaining about earlier in this thread.

Selective reading?


Amy Goodman, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty, the Christian Science Monitor and others have described how US interrogators abused Padilla and destroyed his mind. To expect a person as badly tortured and abused as Padilla to retain the wits not to touch a piece of paper handed to him, or forced into his hands, is unreasonable.

[Nbadan]

The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over… He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.

His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Up until last year the Bush administration maintained it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever. But when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padila out of military custody to face criminal conspiracy charges.

Alertnet (http://www.alternet.org/story/59958/)

[Buford T. Pusser]

they railroaded that boy, just like they tried to railroad me

[FromWayDowntown]

Selective reading?

Nope -- again, the question about the validity of his fingerprints on the paper goes to the weight of the evidence and not to the possibility of any constitutional violation. I'll put it this way -- and perhaps for once you'll understand that you don't know everything -- if every single one of Padilla's constitutional rights had been protected and the prints on the paper came about through post-incarceration interaction, he'd still have a valid appeal to overturn the conviction.

Your subsequent post about the conditions of Padilla's detention, again, is irrelevant to the conviction unless there's proof of some harm stemming from those conditions. What's decidedly missing from that blurb is any suggestion that the conditions of his incarceration provoked a confesison or otherwise caused Padilla to incriminate himself. At this point, even your shadow blogger agrees that Padilla was convicted based on 3 pieces of evidence, none of which had anything to do with the conditions of his incarceration with the possible exception of the application, which: (1) is only part of the evidence used to convict him; and (2) can be challenged on appeal without regard to the constitutional violations made a part of his incarceration.

I don't support this Administration by any means and disdain their domestic tactics in the War on Terror, but I also think if you don't pick and choose your battles on those topics, you end up sounding like a whiny bitch.

[Nbadan]

Your subsequent post about the conditions of Padilla's detention, again, is irrelevant to the conviction unless there's proof of some harm stemming from those conditions. What's decidedly missing from that blurb is any suggestion that the conditions of his incarceration provoked a confesison or otherwise caused Padilla to incriminate himself.

So, they 'allegedly' tortured him just because they are sadistic SOB's and they still didn't get anything on him, but, according to you, that had no bearing on the physical evidence presented at trial so it is immaterial?

[Buford T. Pusser]

I remember when they tried to railroad a blackman in Mississippi, saying he raped a white woman, the only evidence against him was a written confession that had been beaten out of him.

[FromWayDowntown]

So, they 'allegedly' tortured him just because they are sadistic SOB's and they still didn't get anything on him, but, according to you, that had no bearing on the physical evidence presented at trial so it is immaterial?

You tell me what difference it made on the two pieces of evidence (notwithstanding the application) that your blogger says comprised the proof against Padilla. You tell me how the conditions of his incarceration changed those pieces of evidence. Just once, answer that sort of a question.

[Buford T. Pusser]

The material evidence against Padilla was very, very weak. The government had no burden of proof that Padilla was sending code through his messages. The jury simply took prosecutors at their own word. Padilla was convicted because the government had 3.5 years to set him up as 'the dirty-bomber', and Al-Quada sympathizer, all without a lawyer, habeas corpus and all the other constitutional protections that are supposed to protect us against a vengeful out-of-control government.

[Holt's Cat]

Partisanship makes one stupid.

[Nbadan]

so does kitty-nip........

[Buford T. Pusser]

we eat cats in Mississippi

[FromWayDowntown]

The material evidence against Padilla was very, very weak. The government had no burden of proof that Padilla was sending code through his messages. The jury simply took prosecutors at their own word. Padilla was convicted because the government had 3.5 years to set him up as 'the dirty-bomber', and Al-Quada sympathizer, all without a lawyer, habeas corpus and all the other constitutional protections that are supposed to protect us against a vengeful out-of-control government.

And if that evidence is as weak as we seem to think, then Padilla has a wonderful appeal that might actually result in reversal of the conviction. That the jury was inclined to side with the government is: (1) not surprising; and (2) perhaps evidenced by the jury's willingness to convict on apparently weak evidence. But none of that has anything to do with the conditions of Padilla's incarceration, and Dan still has yet to demonstrate in any fashion how the conditions of Padilla's incarceration had anything to do with the conviction. Padilla can't win an appeal based on the constitutional issues without such proof.

Again, there's a difference between finding justifiable bases to make principled arguments and being a partisan screecher.

[Nbadan]

perhaps evidenced by the jury's willingness to convict on apparently weak evidence. But none of that has anything to do with the conditions of Padilla's incarceration, and Dan still has yet to demonstrate in any fashion how the conditions of Padilla's incarceration had anything to do with the conviction. Padilla can't win an appeal based on the constitutional issues without such proof.

Again, there's a difference between finding justifiable bases to make principled arguments and being a partisan screecher.

First of all, this isn't a 'partisan issue', it's a constitutional issue...second of all, I find it hard to believe that you think that a person can be incarcerated for 2 years without a lawyer, without formal charges, without evidence presented against him to a Grand Jury, allegedly tortured, but at the very least psychologically deprived, and this isn't a basis for a 'principled argument'......

[FromWayDowntown]

First of all, this isn't a 'partisan issue', it's a constitutional issue...second of all, I find it hard to believe that you think that a person can be incarcerated for 2 years without a lawyer, without formal charges, without evidence presented against him to a Grand Jury, allegedly tortured, but at the very least psychologically deprived, and this isn't a basis for a 'principled argument'......

I don't think it's a principled basis for an argument to overturn this conviction. You've yet to show me how those factors could have resulted in a conviction. I absolutely agree that Padilla has a great 1983 case, but I don't think there's a principled basis for citing those things as a means to reverse this conviction.

And I do think that this is a lot of partisan yammering, mostly because I don't see a principled basis to make an argument for reversal based on the constitutional issues.

[Holt's Cat]

How long will Nbadan go before actually addressing FWD's point?

[FromWayDowntown]

How long will Nbadan go before actually addressing FWD's point?

Apparently, at least a full day.

[Nbadan]

How long will Nbadan go before actually addressing FWD's point?

I don't always address opinions....FWDT and I disagree.....if he can't see how denying an accused American Citizen incarcerated for 2 years legal representation, habeus corpus rights, depriving him of food, water, reading material, and type of outside communication and all that on top of alleged torture....there's just no hope....he is the lost partisan who would have likely also justified the treatment at Abu Gharib.....

[FromWayDowntown]

I don't always address opinions....FWDT and I disagree.....if he can't see how denying an accused American Citizen incarcerated for 2 years legal representation, habeus corpus rights, depriving him of food, water, reading material, and type of outside communication and all that on top of alleged torture....there's just no hope....he is the lost partisan who would have likely also justified the treatment at Abu Gharib.....

You should know better than that by now. I didn't say that the Administration's actions were justifiable, dan. I've said in this thread and elsewhere that these tactics are indefensible and have repeatedly mentioned in this thread that Padilla has sound legal alternatives to remedy those harms. It's curious to me, though that rather than address my points, you turn to ad hominem and attack me. That's generally the surest sign of someone who can't actually address the question presented.

What I have also said, though, is that they won't (and shouldn't) result in the reversal of this conviction -- that's not opinion; that's the law. If you can't see that distinction -- and since you continue to refuse to address that point, I presume that you are either unwilling or unable to make the distinction.

You're right about this much: it is quite difficult to have a meaningful discussion of anything when one side is making arguments rooted in opinions and the other is making arguments grounded in fact.


if he can't see how denying an accused American Citizen incarcerated for 2 years legal representation, habeus corpus rights, depriving him of food, water, reading material, and type of outside communication and all that on top of alleged torture

see how denying . . . what? There's something missing at the end of that assertion.

[medstudent]

Leonard Pitts: Memo to Bush: The system works

Web Posted: 08/22/2007 05:21 PM CDT

Tribune Media

Real men don't go to court.

For years, that was pretty much the White House stand with regard to Jose Padilla, the American citizen arrested in 2002 for allegedly conspiring to set off a radiological device, a so-called “dirty bomb,” on U.S. soil. It was a serious charge, and it cried out for courtroom resolution.

Except that real men don't go to court. The Bush administration, easily the manliest in recent American history, believed only weaklings, traitors and other liberal Democrats could be so naive as to believe you deal with a captured terrorist by reading him his Miranda rights. That, they told us, was evidence of “pre-9-11 thinking.” But everything changed, they said, on that day and the old rules, which had stood the nation through revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and social upheaval, no longer applied.

So they threw Padilla into a Navy brig instead. He was charged with no crime and, according to his lawyers, was drugged and left chained in painful positions in a tiny cell under a light that never went out. No clock, no windows, no bedding, no mattress and, for the first two years, no lawyer.

When civil libertarians demanded to know how you could justify such treatment of a man who had never been charged with a crime, they were told President Bush did not have to bother with such niceties. By declaring Padilla an “enemy combatant,” Bush could imprison him indefinitely and never have to explain himself to anyone.

That bears repeating. The president arrogated unto himself a power ordinarily associated with tyrants, to impose indefinite detention on anyone he chose. And from the people there arose only the sound of crickets chirping in midnight woods.

But three months ago, the real men finally went to court, rather than make their dubious case before a U.S. Supreme Court that seemed ready to take up the question of whether indefinite detention without trial is constitutional. Last week, Padilla was convicted of terrorism conspiracy charges.

We should be glad prosecutors bagged a bad man. But the irony is that this victory utterly destroys the government's claim that we have to shred the Constitution in order to save it.

Don't take that as an argument for prosecuting all terrorist trials in the criminal courts system. The administration makes a valid point when it says the courts, with their rules of evidence and open proceedings, are ill-suited to handle at least some terrorism cases. One need only conjure the image of Osama bin Laden putting his hand on a Koran and swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but to appreciate the absurdity of trying to process certain terrorist masterminds through the same system that handles carjackers and drug dealers.

But is that image really the only alternative to the image of Padilla chained in isolation under an unblinking light? Is obscenity really the only alternative to absurdity?

I don't buy that. Why could we not institute a special judicial panel that would allow a terrorism suspect to defend himself as in criminal court, yet be sufficiently opaque to safeguard sensitive evidence from public disclosure?

Thing is, ultimately it wasn't the justice system the White House sought to avoid. Rather, it was accountability, oversight, anybody who could tell them no. They said, trust us, because we said so.

And too many of us, scared spitless and willing to trade the Constitution itself for the fool's gold of security, were shamefully willing to do just that.

So the headline here isn't the vindication of the Bush Team. It is, rather, that that team, having spent years trying to circumvent the system, ignore the system, emasculate the system, was finally forced to go through the system.

And what do you know? It worked.
[email protected]

[Winehole23]

shitbird VP




https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/tFU_RlwTPjy_joavBmGAuQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MA--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/usa_today_news_641/465057b7beab9807c75a8707fb7b10dc

JD Vance refers to Sen. Alex Padilla as "Jose" Padilla



(https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social)


‪ (https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social)

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vasmwozbxda25bah7d6sb3ja/bafkreihgaauuuo5ca744fg7ztviqguqtc6wo35yqutn4x2jp7 bviy32jyu@jpeg

[koriwhat]

shitbird VP






(https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social)


‪ (https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social)

You and all the other leftists are nothing but dramaqueens.

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2vtbmhmrwzbqcfv4we4uxzzt/bafkreidglkgl7iqukaxsescegcraalkv74rmktychgqpspyt2 dghtiajxu@jpeg

[Winehole23]

You and all the other leftists are nothing but dramaqueens.no, the danger is very real

[koriwhat]

no, the danger is very real

Lmao "the danger"

Damn you dudes are pathetic. Faint some more over absolutely nothing and absolutely nothing dangerous, as usual.

You leftist males are weaker than your women counterparts.

[ChumpDumper]

But you want us dead.