January 11, 2021, trial will (presumably) begin for the 9/11 co-conspirators in Guantanamo Bay.
7063 days after September 11. 19 years, 4 months, 1 day. 232 months, 1 day.
However you choose to reckon it, this is a huge travesty of justice.
We managed to try and execute the World War II war criminals by 1946.
Almost 20 ******* years later, we STILL haven’t tried these guys.
There is no excuse, no rationalization that can possibly justify this travesty.
And I imagine that the date will slip and probably on the order of months, if not years. As is pretty much the routine with all “judicial” stuff going on at Guantanamo.
We need to abolish the military commissions and require that all terrorism suspects be tried in the Article III Courts. And we must extend the speedy trial guarantee to cover terrorism defendants. At the absolute outside, two years from capture to trial and that should require the prosecution to justify that length of time.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you say, but we should extend speedy trial guarantees to all defendants. Two years in Rikers awaiting trial on a misdemeanor trial is common. Asylum hearings months or years after the first appearance. Civil trials drag on and on…until all these kinds of cases are ended by frustration driven settlements rather than by justice.
This will never happen because of the Torture report, if a scrap of that report is true no court in America would be-able to convict him, any case brought against him in civil court would be thrown out.
and the military isn’t going to put a bullet in his head, so what do we do. can’t release them, no other country want them.
so we do what we have done for the last 20 years.
keep him locked up on some island and pretend he doesn’t exist.
As explained at the above link, the problem in New York (at the State level) is that while they have what appears to be an adequate speedy trial guarantee on the surface, there are loopholes big enough to drive a truck through that stop the speedy trial clock from ticking.
In the Article III Federal Courts, the speedy trial clock is absolute, so much so that the Federal Government often resorts to the practice of leaving potential defendants in State custody on State charges to prevent the Federal speedy trial clock from starting.
I think the speedy trial issue, as it involves State courts, needs to be the focus of federal habeas hearings, particularly in State such as New York, where abuse occurs.
Nothing much you can do about civil trials, to which no speedy trial guarantee applies.
Appoint enough Judges, increase the size of the courts is what needs to be done there.
As I remember there was quite a long and drawn out battle on the hill over what to do with these guys.
On the one side, Democrats argued that they should be granted ordinary due process. The Republicans argued that due process would open up the possibility that they could be detained in a prison stateside. The Republicans wanted to keep them in Gitmo as enemy combatants. And that would mean that they could be held indefinably without a trial.
Unfortunately, the Democrats refused to back Obama on closing Guantanamo Bay and actually went along with Republicans to make it impossible for Obama to close the facility.
They threw away any semblance of credibility on this issue at that time.
Nobody in the current Democratic clown car is stepping forward on this issue in any credible way.
For the record, I have opposed the existence of Guantanamo Bay from day 1 and support its immediate and unconditional closure and the trial of all defendants in Article III Courts.
I also support the immediate and unconditional release of any detainee at Guantanamo Bay who is not facing charges.
Those things that are court matters need prompt resolution.
And, considering the pressures on court schedules, yes we do need more courts. Which means more money and resources.
I don’t understand your attraction to a condition where access to the courts is insufficient for the need. It would be nice if the need for courts wasn’t as high as it is, but that’s not the case. Or are you appealing to the fantasy situation where the imagined populous doesn’t feel as aggrieved it does?
Consider that the cost of keeping people mollified (i.e. not aggrieved) would be greater than the cost of providing courts for the current level of need.
Government is for the people, by the people.
Courts are the mechanism by which the people resolve disputes. Either criminal disputes, (alleged) wrong doings that rise to the level of “harming the whole”. Or civil courts for addressing wrong doings that are more personal.
Courts are what give the people redress for wrongs done to them.
I don’t think that we should give up on taking collective action and return to a situation where the strongest write the rules.
It would be interesting if there were a comparison between the number of court rooms and the number of people. I suspect that population has grown faster than the physical availability of the courts. (Note that the number of interactions between people increases as the factorial of the number of people.
Even if the percentage of interactions that result in “legal level aggrievment” is constant …)
