Secret Trials Endanger US Security

Why are the Bill of Rights, open trials, the rule of law and the traditional American rules of evidence important?

1.If an innocent person is convicted and punished, it's an injustice to that person – and the founding fathers were determined that Americans wouldn't suffer the injustices that had oppressed so many innocent people in the Old World.

2.If an innocent person is convicted, the real criminal will be free to commit more crimes.

So it misses the point to say the civil liberties of individuals must be balanced against the safety of the community. If individual civil liberties aren't protected, the safety of the community is endangered by putting the wrong people in prison, i.e., by allowing the guilty to continue to function.

It's vital that only the guilty be convicted – whether the accused is suspected of a petty theft, a terrorist act or mass murder.

It's vital that only the guilty be convicted – whether the accused is an American citizen, a green-card resident or an outright foreigner.

Whatever the crime, whoever the accused, your safety requires that only the guilty be convicted.

The Bill of Rights and the rules of evidence were developed to assure that only the truly guilty are convicted.

The right to a trial by jury: A defendant must be tried by "a jury of his peers" so that he isn't judged by people who can gain personally by convicting him.

The right to a public trial: If the prosecutors, judges and juries can't be seen and judged by the public, they can short-circuit a fair trial.

The right to counsel: A defendant isn't likely to have the talent and skills necessary to call the jury's attention to logical gaps in the prosecution's case. So the defendant must have a skilled lawyer. To assure that the right person was convicted, appellate courts have ordered retrials when the accused didn't have competent counsel.

The right to confront one's accusers: No evidence is valid if the person offering it can't be cross-examined by the defense. Hearsay evidence is worthless because you can't be sure what someone meant by what he said if you can't question him.

The right to remain silent: If you're nervous or inarticulate, a skilled policeman or prosecutor could cause you to say something that's incriminating but not literally true.

The right to private consultation with an attorney: To mount a competent defense, a defendant must be able to speak freely to his attorney – confident that his words won't be taken out of context or otherwise misinterpreted.

These are just some of the rules that are vital to assure that the innocent aren't convicted while the truly guilty go free.

If these rules are discarded – as the Bush administration proposes to do with secret military trials – we have no guarantee that the people convicted, and possibly executed, will be the true villains. And if the wrong people are convicted, the guilty ones can continue terrorizing Americans.

And those who say "terrorists have forfeited their rights" are forgetting the most important point: Without a fair, open trial, you can't be sure the accused person really is a terrorist. Allowing government employees to act as investigators, prosecutors, judges and juries isn't the same as conducting a fair, open trial.

The Bill of Rights, the rule of law and the rules of evidence are there to protect both individuals and society. If the individual isn't safe from false prosecution, society isn't safe from criminals.

Saying the terrorist danger justifies tearing up the Bill of Rights makes as much sense as saying a threat of invasion justifies disbanding the military.

It's a shame that schools don't show children why the Bill of Rights is so important.

But then, why would government want to teach children that it's important to protect individuals from government?

And then there are opposing views......

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30 2001
Military tribunals: A wartime necessity

© 2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

When Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley in 1901, he was tried before a civilian court, as was Giuseppe Zangara, the would-be assassin of President-elect Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.
When John Hinckley Jr. shot President Reagan in 1981, he, too, was tried before a civilian court. But those who plotted the murder of Lincoln were tried by a military commission at Ft. McNair – with U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt presiding – and hanged.
The difference? In April 1865, the Union was still at war. Spies and saboteurs caught behind Union lines were turned over to the Army. This was true for both sides. Thus, in judging President Bush's decision to use military tribunals, only two questions need to be answered. Is America at war? Is our homeland under attack?
With Marines and special forces in combat in Afghanistan, and grieving New York firefighters still digging in that smoking pile of rubble in lower Manhattan for the charred remains of their buddies, the answer to both is obvious. Why then is Bush being treated like some arsonist of the Bill of Rights for following tradition and doing his duty as a wartime commander in chief?
General Washington used a military tribunal to try and hang Major John Andre, the British spy and emissary to Benedict Arnold. FDR used military tribunals to try Nazi saboteurs put ashore from U-boats. Six Nazis were executed. Lincoln used military tribunals to convict and hang Southern saboteurs. Moreover, he suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned thousands without trials, locked up editors and made himself a virtual dictator of the Union.
But if history has approved of the wartime military tribunals of Washington, Lincoln and FDR, why is John Ashcroft under siege? After all, more innocents have been massacred in atrocities in Bush's war than in any other war in U.S. history. Why the double standard, Sen. Leahy?
Some now argue that the Nazi saboteurs should have been tried in civilian court. But suppose instead of six, it had been 600 Nazis. Suppose Tojo had put ashore 1,000 "kamikaze tourists" in 1941 with orders to run amok, bombing and killing, to create panic in America as soon as Japan attacked. Would each and every Nazi and Japanese saboteur have been entitled to his own separate civilian trial?
Have those demanding civilian trials for foreign terrorists thought through the logic of their position? They are saying it is permissible to drop a 15,000 pound daisy-cutter bomb on Osama bin Laden and his extended family in Kandahar, but if he makes it to U.S. soil and blows up the Sears Tower, the families of his victims must pay for his defense and his trial can be carried on Court TV.
Would prosecutors be required to permit bin Laden's lawyers to question al-Qaida defectors who betrayed him, or see raw intelligence data leading to his indictment? This is not a game we are in, but a war where the next great terrorist attack could be the detonation of an atomic weapon in an American city.
Recall: It took longer than World War II to convict and execute Timothy McVeigh. If every terrorist who slips into the United States is instantly entitled to all of McVeigh's protections and appeals, America will become a haven for terrorism, because America will be the safest place on earth to plot and ply their murderous trade.
This hostility to military tribunals is rooted in part in that 1960s radicalism exemplified by Bill Clinton's letter to his ROTC colonel, saying the best people he knew "loathed" the military.
Since Vietnam, this attitude has infected our popular culture and is reflected in films from "Dr. Strangelove" and "Seven Days in May," to "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon." In the 1990s movie, "A Few Good Men," a wiseacre Ivy League grad (Tom Cruise) uses his cleverness to expose the fascistic militarism of the Marine officer (Jack Nicholson), who commands the detachment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Hollywood formula is ever the same: Liberal heroes triumph over military fascists.
The line used to infer that West Pointers are somehow suspect jurors is: "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." But who would not prefer John Philip Sousa to punk rock? And does anyone think a tribunal of Navy or Marine officers would have handed in a verdict as chowder-headed as did the O.J. jury, mesmerized by the "If-the-glove-doesn't-fit-you-must-acquit!" antics of the "Dream Team"?
But this matter can be readily resolved. Let Congress vote to outlaw military tribunals in the war on terrorism, then let voters sit in a tribunal of judgment on a malingering Congress. My guess? Capitol Hill will raise a mighty racket about military tribunals to mollify their goo-goos, but it will not dare to confront Bush. They've read the polls.

Re: Odd, I thought the Constitution and Bill of Rights applied to American citizens only. Now it applies to the citizens of every country in the world? Guess the Brits are going to be rather upset to learn their folks now have the right to keep and bear arms.

Actually the brits do have a (historical and common law) right to keep and bear arms, their government just hasn't pledged to uphold those rights.

As to alienable rights, such as voting, those are reserved for citizens, not aliens, or the people in general. Other rights inherent in "the people" and pre-existing the social contract such as the right of free association, free speech, and the right to self defense (and the arms necessary for such)do in fact apply to non-citizens, at least theoretically, and have been historically upheld in rare instances. But since the Bill of Rights has been turned into a Chinese menu by both the left and the right, these are all just theoretical considerations by and large.

Once we regard rights as something government grants they become turned into priviledges. I pray we all stay in the priviledged ranks, but I know that leviathan prefers variety in it's diet. Right now the beast is barely dipping it's fingers into the appetizers. The smug amongst us may soon find we are being set up to be the main course. Time will tell, but the trend in US affairs is away from individual freedom and towards more interventionism. Better hope these new modes sunset before the next liberal regime pendulums back into office or else the slope might just fall off quicker than any of us can now imagine.

The screen name is fitting - you exhibit the hospitality of the French. I guess somehow ideas here are judged by the standard of how long one has been a member of the "good ol' boy network". If that's the case you'd be happier at a site where you can control the membership and hence the dialogue. You wouldn't have to worry about real debate since you wouldn't find any of 'da boys' disagreeing with you.

But I wouldn't expect anything less from one who simply parrots meaningless terms, showing pitiful ignorance of any political understaning.

I'm sick of these whipped @ss, muddy headed liberals who call themselve "Libertarians"

I'm sure you come across a lot of 'liberals' who hide under the libertarian label. I hear that's pretty common these days. BTW, please define liberal in true political terms, (and not through more name-calling in the interest of avoiding the question.) Please explain how one could be a liberal libertarian. Would Thomas Jefferson and the other founders who meticulously devised our court system be liberals, Libertarians, or Liberal Libertarians?

We need to get over this hypocritical crap.

Agreed. The rule of law is much to much of a pain in the a** when it's time to just act on emotion and do what we 'feel' like. Ever occur to you that maybe if we had followed the rule of law before, our pants might not be on fire? Probably not, you were probably more interested in how we could get Clinton out of office for getting his noodle wet.

Where are the Libertarians when babies are being slaughtered in the name of "libertarian freedom"?

We're on the sidelines saying, "Once again the new world order has decided to claim Kosovo as the next target" while America either blames it all on Clinton (avoiding the problem with the system) or yells, USA, USA!. We are the few who point out that while US forces are dying in Somalia for a b.s. mission, 800,000 plus are being slaughtered in Rwanda within a few months - and the citizens of this country, not being independent enough to avail themselves of this, (since the trusty media didn't think that much of a story) can't even begin to explain where Rwanda is, being victims of public education. Or maybe they're pointing out another statist venture gone awry in Nicaragua as US special forces and the terrorist contras blow up bridges, attack medical institutions, lay mines in harbors and attack peasant farmers to instill fear in the populace in the name of freedom. Of course, you "conservatives" think that's ay-OK because the president has an (R) in front of his name.

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