Boston Marathon Bombing

[heironymouspasparagus]

I'd chance "suspect" to "terrorist". But your point is taken.

Wouldn't that pesky Constitution you are sworn to obey and uphold - being a lawyer and an officer of the court and all - pretty define him as terrorist after the trial and a finding of guilty....?

[DolfanBob]

Curious how informed that was considering it has been reported repeatedly it was a gunshot wound to the neck or mouth or is this a new development since this morning?

I read that he and his Brother had a suicide pact. And that is why he ran over and helped kill his hancuffed Brother with the stolen SUV.
It is reported he put the gun in his mouth and fired. Only to have the bullit tear through his throat and not kill him.

[Gaspar]

CNN needs to have some meetings to discuss adding some reporters to the payroll.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-17-2013/the-most-busted-name-in-news

[cannon_fodder]

Sorry for the novel, but it Is important to both put the issue in perspective and then address it factually and legally. . .  

I understand the emotion behind wanting to strip rights away from a person who has done horrible things.  However, the logic of that decision is abhorrent and has devastating consequences.  It is disturbing to hear people  brag about being the greatest nation on Earth, valuing freedom and the rule of law, and discussing their fears of the government intruding into their lives – and in the next breath hear them advocate for the revocation of constitutional rights.

NEWS FLASH:  allowing the government to suspend or revoke rights is the utmost expression of government intruding in our lives.  King George, thanks for the Magna Carta, but suspend it whenever you want.  My Fellow Americans – you can have your rights, so long as we can suspend them.  Rights are important primarily because they cannot be stripped without due process.

Under the proposed scenario who gets to decide when it is appropriate to strip someone of their rights?  Just the president?  A judge? Do We the People get to vote on it?  I'm not being obtuse – who gets to decide when a person no longer has rights without due process of law.

What criteria do they use?  If you bomb an event and kill three people are you eligible to have your rights revoked?  What if you are a right wing nut-job who bombs a Federal Building and kills 168?  A left wing wacko who mails bombs to people whose technology to want to regress?  A teacher accused of raping his students is a vile and evil person – lets strip his rights ("OMG you said you want to give this guy rights, you love rapists.  Here is a story about a child being raped, I bet that makes you happy."  Seriously... similar statements have been posted in this thread and passed off as an actually argument).  Drug dealers kill many times more people per year than bombers AND have ties to militant groups – suspend the constitution.  Or are we just talking about bad people, post 911, who use bombs, and may be Muslim?

Who is an "enemy combatant" that we can just declare evil and summarily execute them?

This "enemy combatant" thing is a lowly argument anyway.  He isn't a prisoner of war, and he isn't accused of a crime.  We don't want to return him to his home when the war is over, but we don't want to put him on trial.  Let's just call him an enemy, not charge him, and throw him a cell somewhere and forget about him!  I REALLY do like that solution, most of these people are not right in the head and wish ill to everything I hold dear... but it isn't right (and the Supreme Court rejected the notion of holding people indefinitely without charge, even foreigners caught killing Americans over seas).  If some foreign nation snatched up Americans under a similar situation we would be outraged.  But when we did it we sat silent.

When the revolutionary war was over we normalized relations and went to trading.  During the Civil War hundreds of thousands of Americans rose up against our own nation - when the war was over we released the prisoners and honored their pensions.  We destroyed the Nazis and the Japanese Empire and rebuilt their nations.   Those that we accused of war crimes we tried and executed.  

Now we have advanced enough as a people that we cannot do those things anymore.  Even if they are citizens of the United States, it is too difficult according to many people.  It is too hard, let's just suspend their rights and do as we please.   That argument fails even under our current scheme and even according to our most conservative Justice.

An "enemy combatant" is an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/boumediene-order-10-27-08.pdf

The guy currently in custody is a US Citizen captured on American soil for an act committed on American soil.  We are not aware of any agenda to support Taliban or al Qaeda forces.  What he is accused of doing is murdering innocent people, injuring many more, and utilize a terrorist device to accomplish this goal (technically charged with using a WMD and malicious destruction of property resulting in death).  His actions do not even trigger the standards of "enemy combatant" unless we want to change them to something as loose as "accused of something we really really don't like and find it inconvenient to follow our notions of justice."  

What's more, it is in violation of Federal and International Law according to our own Use of Force Guidelines stemming from 2001.  In 2001 we granted ourselves broad powers to go kick some donkey.  And we did.  Under those guidelines we laid out whose donkey we were going to kick.  Never did those guidelines include US Citizens on US Soil: http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/usc_sec_50_00001541----000-notes.html

But why listen to me?  That radical leftist Justice Antonin Scalia addressed this very issue:

Where the Government accuses a citizen of waging war against it, our constitutional tradition has been to prosecute him in federal court for treason or some other crime. Where the exigencies of war prevent that, the Constitution suspension Clause, Art. I, ß9, cl. 2, allows Congress to relax the usual protections temporarily. Absent suspension, however, the Executive's assertion of military exigency has not been thought sufficient to permit detention without  charge. No one contends that the congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force, on which the Government relies to justify its actions here, is an implementation of the Suspension Clause. . . .. The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive.

Blackstone stated this principle clearly:
". . .Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty: for if once it were left in the power of any, the highest, magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper . . . there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. . . . To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom. But confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to gaol, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government. . . . ìTo make imprisonment lawful, it must either be, by process from the courts of judicature, or by warrant from some legal officer, having authority to commit to prison; which warrant must be in writing, under the hand and seal of the magistrate, and express the causes of the commitment, in order to be examined into (if necessary) upon a habeas corpus. If there be no cause expressed, the gaoler is not bound to detain the prisoner. For the law judges in this respect, . . . that it is unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not to signify withal the crimes alleged against him.î 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/03-6696P.ZD

To those not in the loop, Scalia is among, if not the most conservative judge.  As a man who fears governmental over reach and understands our founding desire to be free from tyranny – he understands the right of the accused.  There is a box this accused fits in – be it a prisoner of war (he's not), a common criminal, or a treasonous citizen.  Two of the three carry the death penalty.  Why ignore our core values for this creep?

To briefly address the suspension of Miranda – generally that is only done when you have minutes to solve the crime, to stop the bomb, or save a life.  When there has been days it has never been utilized in such a way.  What's the point?  Even if you suspend Miranda he STILL doesn't have to speak with you.  All you gain is removing a taint from the case, which is irrelevant given the information we have stacked up.  Heck, "just" killing the MIT officer is enough for life in prison.  Read him his rights and DARE him to utilize them, because the end of the game is probably not going to change.

At the end of the day a person, a people, a country is not judged on how they behave or react to easy situations.  When we afford Constitutional Rights to people accused of going 60 in a 55 it is no great act, or when an accused thief gets a trial we would expect nothing less.  The REAL test of our commitment to freedom and to the rule of law is how we react to the worst situations and how we treat the worst people.  Because, as a people, we are better than this guy and better than what he stands for – we must afford him the rights of our land and put him on trial. To deny everything our nation was founded on for THIS GUY is a horrible act of weakness.

I get it.  This guy has been accused of horrible things.  Based on all the evidence I have seen on the news he is as guilty as I can imagine and deserves to die.  The conspiracy talk is stupid.  The notion that this guy was "just a pawn" is insulting.   He killed an innocent child and two other innocent  people with a bomb that injured a 150+ more, while terrorizing a city, devastating a great event, and then went on to kill another person and try to kill even more.  He deserves to die and I hope he does. I get it, your tough too and want him to be punished.  

But if Uncle Sam can strip a fellow Citizen of his rights without due process – he can strip my rights, he can strip your rights, and our rights are meaningless.    The argument isn't about how one horrible person is treated.  The argument is weather the United States Government can summarily strip the rights of a US Citizen with no due process of law.

The answer is no.




[edit] A transcript of the initial appearance of the criminal Defendant is posted here:  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/22/us/tsarnaev-court-appearance.html?_r=1&;    [/edit]

[Vashta Nerada]

I read that he and his Brother had a suicide pact. And that is why he ran over and helped kill his hancuffed Brother with the stolen SUV.
It is reported he put the gun in his mouth and fired. Only to have the bullit tear through his throat and not kill him.

FWIW, CNN's SWAT contact said the wound looked to him like shrapnel, and that he had multiple bullet wounds all about his body.

[heironymouspasparagus]

This "enemy combatant" thing is a lowly argument anyway.  He isn't a prisoner of war, and he isn't accused of a crime.  We don't want to return him to his home when the war is over, but we don't want to put him on trial.  Let's just call him an enemy, not charge him, and throw him a cell somewhere and forget about him!  I REALLY do like that solution, most of these people are not right in the head and wish ill to everything I hold dear... but it isn't right (and the Supreme Court rejected the notion of holding people indefinitely without charge, even foreigners caught killing Americans over seas).  If some foreign nation snatched up Americans under a similar situation we would be outraged.  But when we did it we sat silent.



But if Uncle Sam can strip a fellow Citizen of his rights without due process – he can strip my rights, he can strip your rights, and our rights are meaningless.    The argument isn't about how one horrible person is treated.  The argument is weather the United States Government can summarily strip the rights of a US Citizen with no due process of law.

The answer is no.

Careful with that enemy combatant argument...that will piss off a lot of people - here and nationwide.  I didn't sit silent and it has cost me at times.


As for stripping rights - well said!!  All of that was well said!!  The big disappointment is how often attempts are made to make it happen.  Even at this late date!  ....especially at this late date...!

[custosnox]

Careful with that enemy combatant argument...that will piss off a lot of people - here and nationwide.  I didn't sit silent and it has cost me at times.


As for stripping rights - well said!!  All of that was well said!!  The big disappointment is how often attempts are made to make it happen.  Even at this late date!  ....especially at this late date...!

In pursuit of justice, we quickly forget that these rights do not exist to protect the guilty,but to protect the innocent,  but to protect the innocent, than they must also be afforded to the guilty.

[Ed W]

Sorry for the novel, but it Is important to both put the issue in perspective and then address it factually and legally. . . 

But if Uncle Sam can strip a fellow Citizen of his rights without due process – he can strip my rights, he can strip your rights, and our rights are meaningless.    The argument isn't about how one horrible person is treated.  The argument is weather the United States Government can summarily strip the rights of a US Citizen with no due process of law.

The answer is no.

Well said, sir, well said.  Thank you for that.

[Gaspar]

I have to agree with CF's epic novel.  You cannot make the constitution a document of convenience.

[heironymouspasparagus]

In pursuit of justice, we quickly forget that these rights do not exist to protect the guilty, but to protect the innocent, but to protect the innocent, than they must also be afforded to the guilty.

Absolutely.

[Conan71]

Well done, CF.

[patric]

Well done, CF.

Ditto.  And now for a moment of reflection:


"The speculation is that the FBI is close to making the case. They probably have enough to arrest him right now, probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict him as well. There are still some holes in this case".
  --  NBC's report after the FBI "leaked" information about bombing suspect Richard Jewell. 

[Vashta Nerada]

BOSTON: A body found floating in the Providence River was that of a 22-year-old student who was falsely implicated in the Boston Marathon bombings, Rhode Island officials confirmed on Thursday.

[DolfanBob]

But the body found was of a student that had went missing before the bombings took place. Most likely unrelated.

[Gaspar]

But the body found was of a student that had went missing before the bombings took place. Most likely unrelated.

It's a conspiracy created by members of the Bilderberg group. Coordinated by all branches of law enforcement using alien technology to cover up.