The jury is in on Tsarnaev, civil liberties and dumb conservatives
From the reading of Miranda rights, to the civil trial, to the 30 verdicts of guilt, the system worked perfectly fine in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - without the need for all of that hard-bitten right wing nonsense about suspending rights indefinitely, holding him as an 'enemy combatant' and suspending rights under the constitution. The 'flaky' left-wing commitment to civil liberties turned out to be shrewd and sensible from start to finish, and brought out the best in us...
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been found guilty on all 30 counts for his role in the Boston Bombing, which killed three and wounded 183. In the next phase of the trial, the same jury – seven women and five men – will hear more witness testimony to help them decide whether Tsarnaev's crimes were so heinous he should be sentenced to death.
With the jury now in on the Tsarnaev trial, the jury is also in on a debate that flared up in the aftermath of Tsarnaev's apprehension.
Two years on, the system has functioned as it should, with constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties upheld from start to finish. Tsarnaev was charged and sentenced to face trial in a civilian court, without his rights being suspended, in a manner that would have undermined American values, and might even have undermined the ensuing prosecution.
In April of 2013, shortly after Tsarnaev's apprehension, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took to cable news and talk radio to push his case that Tsarnaev should ultimately face a criminal trial, but should first be held as an enemy combatant. In an interview with conservative radio host Mike Gallagher, he protested against sending terrorists "this idea of if you can find an American to kill us they can have a legal safe haven."
“We need to find out: does he know anything about a future attack?’’ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Graham also took to the Senate floor to argue that “the surviving suspect — due to the ties that these two have to radical Islamic thought and the ties to Chechnya, one of most radical countries in the world — that the president declare preliminarily that the evidence suggests that this man should be treated as an enemy combatant.”
Following the capture of Tsarnaev, officials cited a public safety exemption in declining to initially read Tsarnaev his Miranda rights. But that exemption only lasted for 48 hours. Graham suggested President Obama consider designating Tsarnaev a combatant while they interrogate him for up to roughly 30 days. Although he noted, in an interview with Candy Crawley, that Tsarnaev was not eligible for a military tribunal due to his American citizenship, he went on to say: “When the public safety exception expires, and it will here soon, this man in my view should be designated as a potential enemy combatant, and we should be allowed to question him for intelligence gathering purposes to find out about future attacks and terrorist organizations that may exist and he has knowledge of.”
Republican Rep. Peter King, endorsed that position on Fox News Sunday. He agreed that the suspect could be tried and convicted in federal court.
"He's going to be convicted," King said. "I'm not worried about a conviction. I want the intelligence."
Senior Democrats countered this dangerous proposition by saying the courts could handle the case against Tsarnaev.
“I don’t think we need enemy combatant (status) to get all of the info we need out of him,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on CNN. “I don’t think we need to cross the line.”
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) questioned whether the controversial status might present problems for the prosecution.
“To hold the suspect as an enemy combatant under these circumstances would be contrary to our laws and may even jeopardize our efforts to prosecute him for his crimes in a court".
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary at the time, stressed that the civilian system had been used to try, convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists since the 9/11 attacks, including the Times Square attempted bomber. "The system has repeatedly proved that it can successfully handle the threats we continue to face," he said.
Many on the right felt that the enemy combatant designation should have been used to enable a thorough interrogation of Tsarnaev, arguing that his lawyers would, when given the opportunity, tell their client to keep quiet. The argument therefore descended into terms of tough, shrewd, rule-bending realism vs dangerously guileless liberal compassion for human rights.
Leaving aside the dubious idea that an American citizen captured in the United States by law enforcement personnel should be held in long term military detention without charge or access to an attorney, a major flaw in Sen. Graham’s case was that the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) prohibited Tsarnaev’s designation as an enemy combatant, something that Sen. Graham should have known very well because he voted for the Authorization Act a year and a half prior to his remarks.
In Obama’s first few months as president, his administration retired the term "enemy combatant" used by the Bush administration to justify indefinite detention of terrorism suspects. But Obama retained the right to detain indefinitely those who provide "substantial support" to the Taliban, al-Qaeda or associated forces. There was, at the time, no evidence that Tsarnaev met those criteria. Moreover, while the Supreme Court has found that a U.S. citizen can be designated as an "enemy combatant," a citizen labeled as such has the right to challenge that designation at an impartial hearing.
Two years on, the system has functioned as it should, with constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties upheld throughout. Although there had been doubts that Tsarnaev could receive a fair trial in Boston, the case moved rapidly and without incident.
The conduct and conclusion of the Tsarnaev case endorses the idea that American courts are fully able to fairly try individuals accused of even the worst crimes, up to and including acts of terrorism. The case also affirms the idea that constitutional protections are so valuable and so fundamental to American justice that they can be extended even to the worst of criminals, up to and including terrorists such as Dzohkhar Tsarnaev.
FROM: http://sheppardpost.com/
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