Court Orders Jose Padilla Released within 30 days

Just being announced on CNN. No link yet.

On edit: story on Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4016078

then this decision is a victory for the Constitution, and a defeat for the forces of tyranny in the Bush administration, that would hold a citizen in jail for nearly two years without any charges.

:thumbsup:

--Peter

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hope his "dirty nuke" doesn't blow up the Brooklyn bridge, 'cause I understand it's going for a really good price...

Whoa, I guess John Pope Ashcroft is going to have to tell the courts to take their rule of law and shove it...

Or has Jose just lost his ability to capture headlines somehow?

by Christmas, that would be wonderful for his family.

. . . but he'll have missed Ramadan already, I'm afraid.

he can nuke a shopping mall before new year's. Maybe your Mom and Dad will get incinerated. How can you POSSIBLY support someone tryingto make a dirty bomb to kill your own people????

Are you unclear on what they are? Are you thoroughly convinced that the government has lead-clad evidence here? Even if you trust this administration, they're making lots of gigantowhopperbungles these days, and the legal system provides safeguards against mistakes.

By the way, a dirty bomb uses nuclear waste to spread contamination over an area. Think trashcan with radioactive waste and dynamite. Yes, it's dangerous, but it's not going to incinerate you. (Well, if you were standing right next to it, you'd get "blowed up real good", but it's not a thermonuclear device.)

A dirty bomb will poison some people and contaminate an area of real estate. If it's really serious, horrible, high-level waste, it'll do more damage and kill more. That stuff is correspondingly hard to get hold of, too, so bear that in mind. The real problem if it's done in an important downtown area like Wall Street.

Innocent until proven guilty. You seem to have a bit of difficulty with degrees of things: all "nuclear" devices aren't fission or fusion devices, and below that there are lower levels of "dirty bombs", all the way down to ones using waste from medical radiation and things like that. Yep, they're "dirty bombs" too, and a classic terror weapon, since they have the same name, but aren't as bad.

There are also degrees of criminal prosecution; you can keep this guy off the street as you attempt to prove his guilt instead of locking him up forever with no due process.

you are unravelling a serious Al Qaeda operation and a public trial would put all of your clandestine information-gathering at risk. This man could hold the key to catching much bigger fish; fish i want caught, regardless of whose president.

say he had a dirty bomb, or was preparing one, when no evidence was found to that nature?

Of course, this would have been cleared up many years ago had he been given access to a lawyer, or at least charged with crimes, or put before a judge and jury.....

The question isn't whether or not Jose Padilla's a good guy. The government seems to think he's a rather nefarious guy bent on killing thousands, and I see no reason to disbelieve it. More importantly, neither does the Second District Appeal Court.

What's at issue are the Constitutional protections afforded all citizens, even if they may be terrorist turds like Padilla. So don't give me any crap about this Muslim celebrating Christmas with his family (which is just plain weird), because this is about a much larger point of maintaining ordered liberty.

I say Ashcroft ignores the court order...Any takers?

and yes, he will drag his feet and stonewall like Cheney and the oil companies, but perhaps eventually he will have to accede.

We'll see..but I agree with you that the Bushevik Imperium's 2 main strategies are:

1) Ignore court orders and stonewall until the bitter end wherever possible.

2) When caught in a lie...reply with six fresh lies.

Ashcroft has already ignored federal court orders w/ no repercussions....Yes, I know, it IS a constitutional crisis, but that hasn't stopped him before...What should happen when he ignores the federal courts is that the judge should send the Marshalls to haul his ass off to prison for contempt...

Here's a link to one other time he did it, and there have been others aside from this one as well.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A50845-2002Aug6¬Found=true

It is incredibly infuriating. I'm not sure an AG has ever done shit like this before...

If Alabama Judge Roy Moore can be tossed from the bench for defying a federal court order, then asscroft can also be sent packing…..but I’m afraid that would require a huge climate change in DC….logic, thus sadly, is irrelevant here.

No bets here :grr:

But you might find some takers at the free republic. I hear tell that they are preaty gullabule.

it good to let people who want to kill YOU go free.

If he really did have plans to kill someone, don't you think they'd have presented it in court by now?

we'll all know everything law enforcement knows. This isn't exactly a dude accused of robbing a 7-11. I understand due process...but you don't understand terrorism.

What part of the Constitution don't you understand? What Ashcroft and co. have done is blatanly unconstitutional. There is a way to try people like this using our laws and not doind and end-run around the constitution, which protects everyone last time I checked. It is not okay to have different standards for different kinds of offenses, terrorism or not.

In my minds eye I see John Ashcroft swirling, whirling, spinning, surging all at the same time, while talking to God.

"While he thinks he is talking to God" :) :hi:

Scum Sucking Maggot comes to mind.

Dood.

and is re-anointing himself to bolster his confidence in his powers.

even more then the USSR had at any one time.

I don't think we're there quite yet. If Chimpy and his admin. get 4 more, who knows.

try to whisk him off to GITMO after "obeying" the court order.

because he's a U.S. citizen.
At least that's my understanding of this stuff.
If they could, they would have already I would think.

WE CAN USE THIS. We need to make a HUGE, MASSIVE STINK.

By taking padilla into custody based on conjectured interactions with alleged al queda members, and NO ACTUAL PROOF, the US government has PROVEN it could have easily taken every single one of the 9.11 perps into custody based on their actions, and subesequently COULD HAVE PREVENTED the WTC attack on 9.11.

There is as much paper on the 19 9.11 perps, if not more, as was on Padilla to warrant his being taken into custody.

YET, the US government took NO action on the 9.11 perps.

THEY FAILED to take action.

USE it.

they could have swept the burned, incincerated dust of their bodies and indicated every one of them! You do realize this is the lame-est post every recorded at DU??? We WIN elections by defending terrorists attempting to deploy a dirty nuke against your neighbors. W

Why wait 2 FRIGGIN YEARS?!?! The DC Snipers were arrested this spring, both tried, and both found guilty of killing what, a dozen people? You'd think that if they had enough evidence to arrest him in the first place on such mind-boggling charges of attempting to construct a dirty bomb and possibly sicken and kill thousands, they'd have had him at least in the courts by now, no? If you can't answer that simple question, why do you continue to post?

CIA and FBI operatives like Mrs. Wilson have a deeply entrenched inestigation going-on and a public trial would force our government to reveal how much know or don't know. I worry that the huge numbers of people who read this thread (outside of DU) are getting the clear impression some here literally LOVE terrorists. These threads are unravelling into something most Democrats don't believe in. We self-identify ourselves are "far out" but this is too far out for those of us who are otherwise pretty far out-there.

OBVIOUS INTENTIONAL failures of the bush regime to take the 19 hijackers into custody for interrogation? The feds knew SO MUCH about the 19 hijackers that they had their photos plastered all over the world within HOURS of the event, even though the perps used fake ids.

There was every bit as much evidence against THEM as there was against PADILLA. BUT had they been in custody and/or knowing that they were under intense scrutiny, they wouldn't have committed 9.11.

Feel stupid yet?

far from it. On the one hand, you fault the government for not pre-empting the 9-11 attacks with domestic spying and then you fault the government for, well,domestic spying. I'm not "stupid" is the right word for people who think in circles.

I suspect the Department of Injustice will appeal to the court en banc or to the Supreme Court however this is an important initial ruling in rejecting Junior's unprecedented assertion that he has the authority to order people detained on his word alone. Here is hoping it is sustained on appeal. It is usually better to have won the first round in the appellate process than to have lost.

Then they will label is as "not setting a precedent" like they did when they ripped off Al Gore three years ago.

As it takes four to grant cert I am sure it will end up there. They strive to be accomodating. Some legal commentators have theorized this is why they took the Cheney energy papers case in order to delay decision and the release of the records until after the election.
http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck121703.asp

The only question the lap dog four have for Theodore Olson is "how high sir" when he asks them to jump. I retain hope that Kennedy will side with Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter and Stevens in forming a firm barrier to the administration's evisceration of the constitution.

You are right about Scalia and his tortuous rationale. Though he once wrote that "the Supreme Court of the United States does not sit to announce unique dispositions" he willingly joined the opinion of Bush v. Gore which stated shockingly that "our consideration is limited to the present circumstances."

http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/07/04/dershowitz/index2.html

heaven forbid we detain someone trying to perpretrate mass-murder against you and your own people.

Not when we have you around. Hell you're damn psychic. You just know that he's guilty of all of those alleged offenses because, well, you heard Aschroft accuse him on television and thus that is more than sufficient for you to have decreed him guilty. Let's build the gallows immediately. No time to waste with a trial. Due Process? Nope no reason to adhere to that since of course well he has to be guilty because George and John said he was. The rule of law, the constitution? Well they're just so inconvenient and bothersome. It is far easier to have the President declare the person guilty and then he can be immediately disposed of, no muss no fuss eh? We can simply toss hundreds of years of well established legal protections of individuals in the toilet and use the bill of rights as toilet paper because the word of George Bush and John Aschroft is now absolute. Even though even the Kings of Old England were subject to the writ of habeas corpus, our King George is above all that legal mumbo jumbo.

The ruling simply forces the government to justify the legality of Padilla's detention and bring formal charges against him if it wishes to continue to hold him. If there is evidence to support the allegations against him then he should be formally charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act and then afforded a trial. If convicted in a court of law he should be dealt with harshly. If however the evidence does not justify such a charge then the government has no legal basis to hold him, none, ZERO. That is a pretty basic principle fundamental to our system of justice. Preserving that principle insures that we remain a free society. This ruling did not address the issue of whether Padilla did what the government claimed he did since that is a matter to be determined at trial, but it was vitally important in that it was a ringing reaffirmation of a citizen's right to not be held forever in limbo by the government without any charges or prospect of trial.

Societies that adopt a brand of alleged "justice" in which a person can be detained at the whim of its "leader" without legal recourse have one thing in common, they are all dictatorships in which the judicial branch is a toothless rubber stamp for the ruler and as night follows day, they are societies in which basic individual legal and human rights are nonexistent. Communist China, Chile under Pinochet, Iraq under Hussein, Iran under the Shah, the Soviet Union under Stalin and of course, Germany under Hitler are but a few of the most notable examples of what societies devolve into whenever individuals are afforded the opportunity to rule without constraint of constitutions or laws and a judiciary which will enforce them.

The United States of America is not like those societies precisely because we have a strong, well evolved legal system that scrupulously ensures that people are not rounded up and held without reason or recourse. Our system was founded on a committment to a higher standard of conduct of the governance of the affairs of men than the raw exercise of unilateral power. Power in this country is not vested solely in the chief executive by design as the founders, as students of human nature, appreciated the corrupting influence of unchecked power. Consequently no man is above the law under our sytem whatever his office may be, hence no single man has the authority to be sole judge, jury and executioner. We cannot continue to be a great nation if we choose to cavalierly discard these principles for which many have paid the ultimate price to establish and preserve. Fortunately this court agreed.

:toast:

your can drive a truck through his argument. I just did.

Your argument, if it can be called that and if I understand it correctly, is to repeatedly insist that Jose Padilla is a worthy exception to habeas corpus. Sorry but it doesn't wash - he's still an American citizen.

if we can't sufficiently defend ourselves. There are thousands of trials going on today, as I write this. Our democracy is alive and well. Justice is served in every courthouse in America. In the case of ONE terrorist -- directly linked to alQaeda -- circumstances demand enormous clandestine information gathering that would be have to be revealed in a public court. I may hate Bush but I love my fellow countrymen and do not wish to see them attacked any further.

as long as secret charges and secret evidence can be used to strip a citizen of rights, it can happen to you.

The pres uses the "enemy combatant" designation based on information he receives from others. As Gore pointed out in his last MoveOn speech, suppose bush gets bad intelligence about you.

If there Jose Padilla has no due process protection, neither do you.

our justice system is an ideal, not a perfect system.
The heart of your argument is in defense of our Nation.
What is our Nation, how is it defined--
By Freedom and Democracy?
While the Constitution did not give us our Freedoms,
it expresses and protects the Ideals under which we, free citizens, wish to exist.

The continuation of the U.S. has a great Nation has little to do with fighting terrorism.

Allowing our Constitution to be irreparably harmed by fear and hysteria will be the death knell of our country not the Jose Padillas of the world.

A little tweaking here and there, and you wake up one morning in prison, arrested and charged, but what are the charges??? you don't know. You can't find out either, because you're held incommunicado, cut off from the outside world. You're gone. And why? Heh, may be you pissed off your neighbor one too many times, perhaps you have dark skin, who knows...but it's no longer "them" it is happening to, it is now you. Pity for you but, if what they say about you is true, then i *feel* safer so...rot.

This is a fact recognized at the end of the Civil War by the Supreme Court of the United States. Writing for the majority Mr. Chief Justice Davis stated eloquently and correctly:

"The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority."

Ex Parte Milligan

The Court went on to hold that where, as you observed they are doing today, civilian courts are open and functioning a US citizen could not be tried by a military tribunal. I might add the very reason that the courts are open and functioning and trials are being held all throughout the country is only because courts have not abandoned their committment to the rule of law which is enshrined in centuries of legal precedent. The mere fact that this is what you derisively term "one case" does not lessen its impact to do grievous harm. Dred Scott after all was but one poor soul who was subject to involuntary servitude but it was upon his back that the odious institution of slavery was given the stamp of legal approval. So too does this administration seek to establish with Padilla the legal precedent that it has the right to imprison people without trial and on its word alone. Fortunately our judges and courts are not making a Dred Scott like error today and are instead upholding the preservation of individual human rights, namely the right not to be thrown into a hole forever without ever being charged with any crime.

As for your argument that having a trial would somehow compromise national security and reveal intelligence secrets Congress and the judiciary have enacted specific legal strictures to insure that this will not happen. We have something called the Classified Information Procedures Act and rules of procedure in federal courts which specifically prevent the public disclosure of sensitive information while simultaneously insuring the defendant has the opportunity for a fair trial. One does not therefore need to eliminate the right to a fair trial to achieve the ends of protecting classified information. There is no need to hold someone without trial to supposedly protect national secrets. Interestingly though the Communist Chinese use your very same argument to justify detention of political dissidents and their secret trials.

...I would bet the idea of any alternate form of trial (tribunal etc.) would also be ruled unconstitutional against an American citizen. I don't believe we have seen that yet, have we?

JM

We'll hear a lot more about this. Strap yourselves in.

nothing like having a dirty nuke going off in the U.S. shopping mal lto teach those capitalist pigs a lesson. How many Americans on our own soil have to be slaughtered before you think a legal remedy is appropriate? Judging by the tone of your post, they probably have to kil levery last one of us before you feel justice has been served.

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That way we may find out if he's guilty. What's the problem? You don't hold people in jail without charges being filed timely. That was the old American way. Has worked well for year, till Ashcroft, et al.

there are thousands of trials going on right now...with only one person (out of thousands) being held under extraordinary circumstances. Due to the nature of the al Qaeda threat, putting our evidence out in public aganst this alQaeda operative is counter-productive to keeping Americans safe. And calling me a wing-nut merely reveals you to be the reactionary.

trade freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security.

So put a sock in it.

It's SEVERAL people---are you aware that the "enemy combatants" at Gitmo haven't been given legan representation EITHER, haven't been accused of crimes EITHER, haven't been given a trial EITHER....

it's not just one person.

It's many people, and probably many more people than we'll ever know about.

Remember after 9/11 the mass arrests and detainments of swarthy dark haired possibly middle eastern men? Taken into custody by the INS for NO reason, Allowed NO communication to their families to let them know they were in jail, allowed NO legal representation, accused of NO crimes except being from the same region of the world that the 'bad people' were from?

Did you forget about those things? Or are they just not convenient to your argument?

there's still hope for our country. :thumbsup:

Perhaps some people in government are waking up???

On a respirator but not quite dead. If this man is an enemy charge him as such or let him go. He deserves the same rights as any other American.

:thumbsup:

:dem:

I wonder whether the semblance is only superficial? Hmmm, both have something to do with bombs and domestic terror. :tinfoilhat:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/padillaJD2.html

John Doe #2


Jose Padilla


Previously posted at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=275766

I just hope it holds up.

This is the real deal--the heart of the consitutional republic at stake. There simply can be no authority for the Ashcroft raids. We risk descending into barbarism and outright fascism.

Ashcroft is not going to let this guy go. Court order or not. 30 days may as well be 30 years.

Was it ever legal to imprison someone in this country just over what they might have said or thought?

Has Ashcroft turned into the Thought Police?

What good will come from keeping him another 30 days?

Don

This could be really good news. But just for a moment think of what the oucome of hime sleeping for a year and then waking up and letting off a subway stinker that kills a few thousand New Yorkers?

I just had to ask...

if a terrorist gets freed because Ashcroft couldn't
obey the law , I'd mighty pissed at the Justice Dept.
for allowing it . Ashcroft shouldn't of tried shredding
the Constitution .

I don't presume to know the guilt or innocence of padilla
but if the gov. doesn't have a case , he should not be held .

If the Gov. has a case then bring it to court
where all Americans are presumed innocent .

I know I should not ponder it but what if?

Am I the lone voice in the DU wilderness vainly trying to keep a lid on alQaeda's operations in the United States? Why are DUers cheerleading for this guy? Why am I called a wing-nut for understanding that he may be an American but operates for alQaeda. An American passport isn't a license to kill Americans with a dirty bombs. if the government is still connecting the dots back from Padilla to bin Laden, let them take all them time they need, without regard to whose president.

...I might decide that it's OK to ignore the Constitution.

...

...Nope. Didn't happen.

That "if we can stop one crime, it's all worth it" nonsense is so old, it's making its own cheese. If we ignore basic rights of citizens, all citizens, then there's nothing worth defending.

destroying Constitutional rights....

I see both sides.....

No easy answers here, but 2 years seems like an awfully long time to hold someone without a charge!

DemEx

Have you seen the evidence? You're willing to just take Ashcrofts word for it?

I think the federal judge who ruled on this case knows a bit more about the law and this case than you do. You do realize that our "great" AG who is holding Padilla (who may or may not be linked to Al Quaeda) has just been fined for breaking the law himself. He's also denied federal court orders to turn over his SECRET evidence about Padilla. He won't even show the goddamn evidence to the judge!

If Padilla works for Al Quaeda, lock him up and throw away the key, but I'm not going to just take a lunatic like JA's word for it and I'm also not willing to give up a single persons right to fair trial and representation either. If it happens to one American citizen, it can happen to you next.

Whether you or anyone else *thinks* that Jose Padilla is a terrorist is well beyond the point, and you're not in a position, frankly, to do anything *but* conjecture. The man's been in prison, without trial, for two years. If this were happening in another country, we'd be calling him a political prisoner. In fact...

No. If the gov't can't make a case by now, he needs to be freed.

All this ruling said is that he could be held as an enemy combatant. The Justice Department will now just charge him as they would any other criminal. And you can bet that the bail will be sky high, so he won't be seeing the light of day for a long time.

Since Padilla will no longer be an "enemy combatant" he will be arrested and charged and probably confined without bail. He belonged in the criminal justice system from the beginning. Keeping a US citizen on US soil as an enemy combatant really tried to move established law way too far.

The government will go for an en banc appeal in the 2nd circuit and then SCOTUS if necessary. His release will probably be stayed or the government can just arrest him and run him through the criminal justice system. At best Jose gets a new jumpsuit.

I read the district court opinion and the 2nd circuit opinion. I can see room for the an en banc panel or SCOTUS to keep Padilla as an enemy combatant in they want to.

Not saying that is the right thing to do.