The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: DumbAss Tanker on April 21, 2013, 11:31:31 AM
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A lot of more Conservative commentators are calling for the captured terrorist to be declared an 'Enemy combatant' and tried by military tribunal, even though he was lawfully in the US and committed his crime within the territorial jurisdiction of the US. Personally I think it's a bad idea, since it crosses a line where the Bill of Rights won't apply to an accused if the person who happens to be President at that time decides the accused was consorting with or supporting the wrong people by the ruling party's own political lights, and anyone else associated with those 'Wrong people' ever committed an act of violence (The facts are a lot more clear cut with the bomber now in hand, of course but once the principle of BOR protection is knocked down for one guy, there isn't any legal control on how far it can go as long as the label 'Terrorist' gets slapped on an act or an entire group by the Prez).
There is also some logical flakiness to the application of the whole 'Miranda exception' in this case, since there is no particular reason to believe there is a ticking bomb or activated confederate on the loose, really a different but related topic. While I'm on it, though, it's just my personal educated opinion on that one that if the little bastard survives and goes to trial, the government will ultimately end up defending that part of their case at the Supreme Court, with less than an even chance of winning the point (Though it appears there is far more than enough evidence to convict his ass even if he did lawyer up, which makes the need to resort to such an exception pretty questionable in the first place, and anything he could tell them about associates is almost certainly obtainable from his electronic and paper footprint). The Miranda exception does not prevent an accused from lawyering up or zipping his lip, by the way, it just means the prosecution can still admit into evidence any statement made before the accused-in-custody was read his 5th and 6th Amendment rights.
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I'm a bit conflicted.
I understand the need for American constitutional protections, but we haven't had too many legal citizens join a global terrorist organization that wanted to kills us and turn the country into something it's not.
The only value I see in this scumbag is what we can learn from him in regards to other plots and sleeper cells. If he is miranded he won't talk.
What really makes me angry is he just became a citizen last Nov. 11th. He hasn't even been a citizen for six months yet, maybe his citizenship should be revoked. I'm afraid this isn't the last time this issue is going to come up.
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I am extremely uneasy about it also. Someone on NRO corner wrote interrogate him regarding cell and contacts, then Miranda him before discussing what happened. Makes sense.
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I don't understand the Miranda rights hoopla anyway. If he is a citizen as they say, the rights do not have to read to him for them to be in effect. He still has the right to not talk. At any point if he says he wants a lawyer, the interview is over. Anything said between then and his lawyer being present is inadmissible.
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I don't understand the Miranda rights hoopla anyway. If he is a citizen as they say, the rights do not have to read to him for them to be in effect. He still has the right to not talk. At any point if he says he wants a lawyer, the interview is over. Anything said between then and his lawyer being present is inadmissible.
Exactly, and I think their rationale for even trying to use it at all is very iffy at best.
On the enemy combatant part, I see it as a case where you could make a good argument for it, but once you go that way in this particular case, you've crossed a line that can't be uncrossed, opening the door for using military tribunals to bypass the BOR for political trials and create a whole separate bunch of political defendants and prisoners, because the trigger isn't "Islamist bomber," it's whatever the administration in power at any given time wants to brand as a "Terrorist-affiliated threat."
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Exactly, and I think their rationale for even trying to use it at all is very iffy at best.
On the enemy combatant part, I see it as a case where you could make a good argument for it, but once you go that way in this particular case, you've crossed a line that can't be uncrossed, opening the door for using military tribunals to bypass the BOR for political trials and create a whole separate bunch of political defendants and prisoners, because the trigger isn't "Islamist bomber," it's whatever the administration in power at any given time wants to brand as a "Terrorist-affiliated threat."
Exactly. If the executive branch can declare a citizen an "enemy combatant" for acts committed within the United States, the same justification could be used for "teahadists", anti-abortion protesters, or Second Amendment supporters.
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What's the problem? Charge him with treason. He belongs to a group that advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Try him in court and then hang him right away.
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What's the problem? Charge him with treason. He belongs to a group that advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Try him in court and then hang him right away.
I'm not that concerned about what they charge him with, and there's a ton of evidence assuming he wasn't headshot or something so he'd end up incompetent to stand trial anyway. I'm more concerned that we don't do something irretrievably stupid and dangerous just to get one guy who is clearly going to be living at the Iron Bar Inn for the rest of his life, however short or long that may be, even without us having to go down a bad road to get there.
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I'm more concerned that we don't do something irretrievably stupid and dangerous
And given this administration/AG, that's a definite possibility.