From allegations of planning to plant a readioactive "dirty" bomb, to being convicted of having his prints on a piece of apparently "found" by the government. The rest was purely circumstantial.

The case against against Padilla hinged on one piece of papar: an application with his fingerprints. If this is enough to incarcerate and torture an American citizen, then America the Beautiful has truly fallen to fear, fascism, and intolerance.

This man was tortured to the point of being mentally incapable of mounting a proper defence.

Recall Mr. Padilla's legal journey through the US "Justice" system: two days before he was about to be found illegally detained by a US District Court, Bush declared him an "enemy combatant" and whisked him off incommunicado to a military brig. Padilla's quest for a writ of habeaus corpus finally ended up after an outrageous delay in December, 2003, in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which soundly rejected the Bush "enemy combatant" doctrine, and ordered him released within 30 days. The order was stayed and on appeal, the US Supreme Court issued a ridiculously technical rejection of Mr. Padilla's application, a further example of the political, moral and ethical cowardice of that Bench. On refiling of the application in South Carolina, Padilla won. On appeal, 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that win, and found Bush empowered by the Congressional authorization of force as the basis for his order.It wasn't until 2005, when it was patently obvious that if re-submitted to the US Supreme Court, Bush would lose, Padilla was yanked from military custody and formally indicted in a civillian court.

What a travesty of justie, what a farce of a trial.

However, I am not prepared to conclude that his trial was bogus. The evidence against him was presented, and he had the opportunity to rebut that evidence. The jury found him guilty.

Perhaps someone can persuade me otherwise, but I prefer the trial process to the "Guantanamo" procedure wherein the President simply designates people as enemy combattants, and that is all the process they get.

In Padilla's case, there was at least some physical evidence against him:

quote:

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The key piece of physical evidence was a five-page form Padilla supposedly filled out in July 2000, to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, which would link the other two defendants as well to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.

The form, apparently recovered by the CIA in 2001 in Afghanistan, contains seven of Padilla's fingerprints and several other personal identifiers, such as his birth date and abilities in Spanish, English and Arabic.

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As I read the Guardian article, Padilla did not claim this document was a forgery; instead, he claimed that he was applying to study Islam. That could conceivably be true; it could also be a cover story.

It's more than good enough for Americans, however, just to be accused by the Holy Commander in Chief.

Padilla did nothing, the accusations of terrorism were bogus (the fact that the government never charged him with anything of the kind indicates there was nothing there, and they knew it).

Democracy Now Interview: How Americans Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla

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AMY GOODMAN: What was the effect of over three-and-a-half years of isolation on Jose Padilla?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: I think there’s two things, really. Number one, his family, more than anything, and his friends, who had a chance to see him by the time I spoke with them, said he was changed. There was something wrong. There was something very “weird” -- was the word one of his siblings used -- something weird about him. There was something not right. He was a different man. And the second thing was his absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness, largely. It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like -- perhaps like a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would, as I said earlier, he would subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened. So I think those would be the two main things.

Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

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Jeff I think that you forget the potential for inherent bias in a jury. IMO a person accused of terrorism in the Excited States in todays climate is as likely to get a fair trial as a black man accused of violence being tried by a jury of white people

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Yet many people charged with terrorism are successful at trial:

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A "terrorist report card" prepared in September by the Center on Law and Security at the New York University Law School found that in 510 cases since 9/11 that the government said were terrorism-related, only 158 defendants have been prosecuted on charges of terrorism or giving material support to terrorism. The rest have been prosecuted on lesser charges, and no link to terrorism was proved in court. The figures are the most recent available from NYU.

Lower conviction rate

The report found a 29% conviction rate in terrorism prosecutions, compared with the Justice Department's 93% conviction rate in other criminal prosecutions.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-18-padilla-charges_n.htm

The bottom line is that there has to be some method for deciding who is planning to blow up the subway with thousands of people inside, and who isn't. A jury trial provides one reasonable way. Is there a better way? You tell me.

[ 16 August 2007: Message edited by: jeff house ]

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Yet many people charged with terrorism are successful at trial

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The Padilla case is a travesty of justice, perpetrated by an authoritarian state.

Padilla has been in solitary confinement for the last 5 years. During that time he was drugged, humiliated, and tortured. He was denied the presumption if innocence. He was denied the right to counsel. For years he was denied the right to know about or respond to government allegations against him. He was eventually charged with conspiring to commit acts of murder, kidnapping, and maiming outside the United States, committing one or more overt acts in the United States in furtherance of those acts, and providing material support and resources to be used in preparation for a conspiracy to murder, kidnap or maim on foreign soil. This in a country whose President is himself notoriously guilty of all those things.

Eventually he was driven insane by the treatment of his savage captors. Any fair-minded person would agree that the case ought to have been dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct, let alone for lack of evidence that he actually did anything illegal. Every left-of-Bush commentator has denounced his prosecution as a politically-motivated, baseless sham. Except, of course, for our resident defender of civil liberties, jeff house, who is "not prepared to conclude that his trial was bogus."

Mr. House wants to be "convinced" that Padilla is an "innocent man". Never mind that the actual burden of proof is to convince the jury that he is guilty; House turns that on its head, acknowledging that Padilla's exculpatory defence "could conceivably be true," but apparently that's not enough to raise a reasonable doubt of his guilt.

Padilla's lawyers, fortunately, don't agree with Mr. House. They plan to appeal the decision.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome, Padilla should be set free. He has been tortured enough already.

[ 20 August 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Whether a person subjected to a torture regimen of that severity can possibly receive a "fair trial," in light of his obvious inability to participate meaningfully in his own defense, looms darkly over this entire proceeding.

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There is nothing that Padilla can possibly do that could damage the fundamental nature of the United States that could be worse than what the administration has done.

quote:

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By finally indicting him, the administration was able to argue, successfully, that the Court should refuse to rule on that question on the ground that the claims were now "moot" by virtue of the indictment. As a result, a ruling by a very right-wing appellate panel in the Fourth Circuit, which held that the President does have these imprisonment powers, still remains valid law, and the administration still claims the authority to imprison U.S. citizens with no charges.

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The administration has brought the administration of justice into disrepute, Padilla should be freed.

Is there any evidence of this?

You think that the US displays lacking evidence against Padilla, but then you are quite willing to declare him innocent and say that the US is evil, always and all the time.

What do you base this on?

[ 16 August 2007: Message edited by: Kerouac ]

"The prosecutors had asked to be allowed to introduce a video showing Osama bin Laden speaking to recruits at the camp Goba attended. But U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke ruled that out after defense attorneys protested that the tape would be prejudicial.

"The video is out," she said."

http://tinyurl.com/2xm63l

Yet changed her mind:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062601850.html

Third, he wasn't actually convicted for any criminal act but suspicion that he might oneday commit one because of his admittedly anti-American sympathies. Not so long ago that alone would have been widely seen as fascistic.

[ 16 August 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kerouac:
How do you know that America tortured him into confessions and tried him unfairly?

Is there any evidence of this?

You think that the US displays lacking evidence against Padilla, but then you are quite willing to declare him innocent and say that the US is evil, always and all the time.

What do you base this on?

[ 16 August 2007: Message edited by: Kerouac ]

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How do we know the moon is not made of green cheese?

His torture has been widely reported and not refuted.

quote:

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The jury in this case apparently accepted the government's contention that Padilla was a member of Al Qaeda, and had returned from a trip to Pakistan full of plans to wreak mayhem on his own country. They cared not a whit for the fact that the government had used methods against Padilla (three years of isolation and total sensory deprivation that had driven him insane) which would have made medieval torturers green with envy. They cared not a whit that there was no real evidence against Padilla.

This was, in the end, a case that most closely resembled the famous Saturday Night Live skit in which witches were dunked underwater to "prove" whether they were in fact witches, and where if they drowned, they were found to be innocent. In the end, Padilla's jury simply bought the government's wild and wild-eyed story. They decided he hadn't drowned, so he must be guilty.

Padilla can now expect to spend what's left of his life in prison. Since the government has already driven him insane, he will have the added burden of being mentally unbalanced from the outset of his incarceration. His survival prospects are not good.

The president promptly thanked the jury for their "good judgment."

We can no doubt expect many more Padillas now that the way has been paved for this kind of totalitarian approach to law enforcement.
Source

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quote:

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The man wasn't given a timely trial, and he was tortured to the point of Winston Smithism - to the point where he loved "Big Brother, aka George Bush" so much, that he thought a civilian trial was unfair to the President. Then he was found guilty. He was at the very least, incompetent to stand trial. He was systematically tortured. He was denied a timely trial. He was denied a good defense, because he was so delusional he wouldn't cooperate with his defense team.

This was a show trial and I can't view it any other way. A man who has been systematically tortured to the point of delusion; to the point of being unable to cooperate in his own defense, being found guilty, is nothing to celebrate and I really doubt most of the Founders would see it as something to be proud of.

I also doubt that many foreigners who are aware of the trial view it as anything but a show trial. Americans may wish to deceive themselves that this had something to do with justice; but I'll lay long odds those who have less stake in the lies Americans need to tell themselves to continue to pretend that their system is "good", or "just", or even "still Constitutional" see it as anything but a parody of justice. Source

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A jury decision is only as good as the information upon which it is based. Too often, the most important evidence is withheld from the jury. Political viewpoints and personal prejudices of jurors are often more important than the facts of the case. The August 17, 2007 Concord Monitor reports that Peter Whoriskey of the Washington Post states, "...The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group. On the last day of trial before the July 4th holiday, jurors arranged to dress in shirts so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color - red, white or blue..."

In the Padilla case, did the jury know that the defendant was the victim of extreme torture for more than 3 years? That information might have made the jury sympathetic toward Padilla. On the August 16, 2007 broadcast of Democracy Now, forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Angela Hegarty, stated that, "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind. Padilla's personality was deconstructed and reformed." She said the effects of the extreme isolation on Padilla are consistent with brain damage. "I don't know if he's guilty or not of the charges that they brought against him," said Dr. Hegarty. "But... he's already paid a tremendous price for his trip to the Middle East." Source

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Jose Padilla's conviction on terrorism charges on August 16 was a victory, not for justice, but for the US Justice (sic) Department's theory that a US citizen can be convicted, not because he committed a terrorist act but for allegedly harboring aspirations to commit such an act. By agreeing with the Justice (sic) Department's theory, the incompetent Padilla Jury delivered a deadly blow to the rule of law and opened Pandora's Box.

Anglo-American law is a human achievement 800 years in the making. Over centuries law was transformed from a weapon in the hands of government into a shield of the people from unaccountable power. The Padilla Jury's verdict turned law back into a weapon.

The jury, of course, had no idea of what was at stake. It was a patriotic jury that appeared in court with one row of jurors dressed in red, one in white, and one in blue (Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post, August 17, 2007). It was a jury primed to be psychologically and emotionally manipulated by federal prosecutors desperate for a conviction for which there was little, if any, supporting evidence. For the jury, patriotism required that they strike a blow for America against terrorism. No member of this jury was going to return home to accusations of letting off a person who has been portrayed as a terrorist in the US media for five years. Source

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[ 20 August 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Padilla didn't do anything. I don't know about you Americans, but in the civilized world, if you don't do anything illegal, you are innocent. Thinking about something isn't illegal.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jingles:
... Al Qaeda application form? (Why an international terrorist organization, an allegedly decentralized, cell structure hunted around the globe would have such a thing isn't explained. Did the French Resistance have such forms? How about the IRA: "religion-please check one a. Catholic [] b. Protestant[]"? Seems rather unlikely, like a passport floating down from the heavens above Manhattan).

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quote:

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[A]ttorneys for Jose Padilla filed a suit in a California federal district court [Jan. 4] against John Yoo, the former deputy assistant Attorney General whose legal opinions formed the basis for Padilla's detention and the interrogation techniques used against him that the attorneys call torture….

While in detention, Padilla alleges, in this suit and others filed previously, he was routinely subjected to torture that was authorized as legal and defensible by Yoo.

Those include being subjected to noxious odors, extreme temperatures, sleep and sensory depravation, and standing in painful stress positions in a fashion similar to the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He also says he was given what he thought were hallucinogenic drugs, was routinely threatened with physical punishment, death, or translocation to Guantanamo, and forbade access to a Koran….

The suit filed … in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, turns the spotlight of blame on Yoo, the author of a series of legal memoranda known collectively as the "Torture Memos." Drafted in 2002, when Yoo was a deputy assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, they provided the legal justification for the interrogation techniques used on suspected Al Qaeda operatives that many, from former generals to presidential candidates, have since decried as torture.

"John Yoo is the first person in American history to provide the legal authorization for the institution of torture in the U.S.," said Jonathan Freiman, an attorney representing Padilla in the suit. "He [Yoo] was an absolutely essential part of what will be viewed by history as a group of rogue officials acting under cover of law to undermine fundamental rights. It never would have happened without the legal green light. That made it possible."

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It is impossible to overstate the importance of the principles involved in the Padilla case for the American people. Ordinary Americans might ask, "Why get all upset about some guy named Jose Padilla? He's just a terrorist."

What such Americans fail to realize, however, is that Padilla was just the test case whose legal principles would then apply to all Americans. That's why groups dedicated to civil liberties and especially the Bill of Rights have focused such an inordinate amount of attention on the Padilla case. They understood that if the enemy-combatant doctrine would be upheld with respect to Padilla, the government would then be able to apply it against all Americans, including dissidents, protesters, and critics of the government.

The enemy-combatant doctrine constitutes the most direct and dangerous threat to the freedom of the American people in the history of our country.

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As you lower expectations about how "terrorists" (i.e. political dissidents) are to be treated, each subsequent exposure to torture imagery renders them more familiar, hence more acceptable. After "terrorists" will come "child molesters", then those with guns, until we get to people with mouths.

At the end, such imagery will tend to bore most, exciting only deviates and dissidents, who are essentially deemed the same. One need only look how politically acceptable the use of ad hoc electrocution by police officers has become.