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Author Topic: Due process  (Read 8462 times)

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Thad

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Due process
« on: June 12, 2008, 10:40:25 AM »

Times Online: Supreme Court ruling cripples Guantanamo trials:

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In its third rebuke of the Bush Administration's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the court ruled that the 270 foreign terror suspects have the right under the US Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts on the American mainland.

Good for Kennedy.  I think it's a stretch to describe him as the swing justice, but he has been on the issue of due process for prisoners in Gitmo.

(Also, recommending Gitmo from the other night's Daily Show as the thread icon.)

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The court's four conservative justices dissented. Antonin Scalia said America "is at war with radical Islamists" and that the decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed".

You know what else does that?

INVADING A COUNTRY THAT POSES NO THREAT TO YOU.

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Mr Bush, speaking from Rome, said he did not agree with the decision and would consider new legislation to overcome it.

It's always amazing to watch him completely deny reality here.  BOTH of the men who could be President by January are saying they'll close Gitmo.

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"I strongly agree with those who dissented," he said. "Their dissent was based on serious concerns about US national security."

"Also, seventy-five percent of them were appointed by someone named Bush."
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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2008, 11:17:21 AM »

BOTH of the men who could be President by January are saying they'll close Gitmo.

Whoops, looks like McCain's actually criticizing the ruling and saying he'll do everything he can to minimize its impact, despite his earlier comments that he wanted to close the place down.
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Royal☭

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Re: Due process
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2008, 12:17:03 PM »

What can you say?  Sometimes McCain just loves a yummy meal from Waffle House.

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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2008, 11:17:08 AM »

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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2008, 12:45:26 PM »

AP: Federal judge rules Bush's aides can be subpoenaed

This in the wake of a contempt citation for Rove.

I still don't see the Justice Department complying, but if Obama's President in January, we're hopefully going to see a lot less obstruction.

(Plus, if Obama's President in January and the Bush Administration is still working on appealing this case, they're going to be in the rather awkward position of continuing their attempts to expand executive powers when there's a Democrat in the White House.)
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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2008, 07:25:41 PM »

So, all this chatter about how we have to keep these bad bad terrorists in Guantanamo Bay and torture them or we're all gonna die?

It turns out the CIA allegedly protected war criminal Radovan Karadzic for years in exchange for his keeping a low profile.

Am curious what my roommate's Bosnian Muslim girlfriend will have to say about that.
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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2012, 10:12:08 AM »

So what's it take to get the entire SCOTUS to actually agree on something?

Apparently police claiming they can just slap GPS's on people's cars without warrants.

The question of whether GPS tracking ITSELF is okay, however, is left for another day:

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Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the decision also should have settled some of those questions instead of deciding a case about a “21st-century surveillance technique” by using “18th-century tort law.”

“The court’s reasoning largely disregards what is really important (the use of a GPS for the purpose of long-term tracking) and instead attaches great significance to something that most would view as relatively minor (attaching to the bottom of a car a small, light object that does not interfere in any way with the car’s operation),” Alito wrote.

Alito’s point was that it was the lengthy GPS surveillance of Jones itself that violated the Fourth Amendment and that “the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.”

“For such offenses,” he wrote, “society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply could not — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”
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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #8 on: April 02, 2012, 09:39:41 AM »

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.
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François

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Re: Due process
« Reply #9 on: April 02, 2012, 01:23:16 PM »

It's been a while now since I figured a time would soon come, when I'd take the decision that I would not set foot in the US for love or money, if the opportunity arose. Well... there ya go.
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Ted Belmont

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Re: Due process
« Reply #11 on: April 03, 2012, 09:30:36 AM »

Ha, Collinsville. That's where I lived until I moved earlier this year, and yeah, it's a dump. Not as bad as some of the neighboring towns, though.

EDIT: Oh man, THAT cop. I never had any direct contact with him, but yeah, he has a reputation for shadiness.
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Thad

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Re: Due process
« Reply #12 on: May 18, 2012, 09:32:04 AM »

Oh good: that bit of the NDAA that allowed for indefinite detention without trial is already suspended.

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"This court is acutely aware that preliminarily enjoining an act of Congress must be done with great caution," she wrote. "However, it is the responsibility of our judicial system to protect the public from acts of Congress which infringe upon constitutional rights. As set forth above, this court has found that plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits regarding their constitutional claim and it therefore has a responsibility to insure that the public's constitutional rights are protected."
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Brentai

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Re: Due process
« Reply #13 on: May 18, 2012, 11:35:38 AM »

Oh, hey, welcome back checks and balances.  We missed you.  A lot.
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LaserBeing

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Re: Cheerful News
« Reply #14 on: June 03, 2012, 06:59:40 PM »

(THAD EDIT: Split from Cheerful News; adding quote of OP for context.)

Quote from: Rooser
Okay, so if this guy makes it on an NFL team I will seriously consider becoming a football fan and rooting for his team.

What the quote says.

(FURTHER THAD EDIT: Seeing as the quote does not actually add all that goddamn much context, I will summarize: a 16-year-old boy was accused of rape 10 years ago; on his lawyer's advice he copped a plea despite the total lack of evidence.  Recently his accuser got back in touch with him and admitted on tape to making the whole thing up; the conviction was overturned.)

That's great for him, but seeing a high profile case that seems to provide grist for the "women just make up rape allegations for fun" defence making the news doesn't exactly set me walking on sunshine.
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Thad

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Re: Re: Cheerful News
« Reply #15 on: June 03, 2012, 07:55:37 PM »

Well, absolutely any verdict can be reduced to some stupid caricature to support an existing viewpoint.

While I'm sure there IS a loud minority of people whose default assumption is "women just make up rape allegations for fun", I think there's a far larger section of the population that's inclined to automatically sympathize with a woman who claims to have been raped.  That's obviously not inherently a bad thing, but in this case it just so happens that it was.

Of course, a really thoughtful and nuanced interpretation of this case must, necessarily, get into the flaws in our justice system itself -- first of all, the racial biases that would lead to a situation where a lawyer actually says "Look, they're gonna convict you with or without evidence so you'd better just cop a plea"; second, the sheer horror of what it can mean to be branded a sex offender; and third, the ramifications of trying juveniles as adults, and the dilemma that poses even in the case of serious violent crimes.

And fourth, the mess that passes for the American mental health system.  Because if that article describes the accuser accurately, then armchair-psychologist Thad thinks that maybe she should be evaluated for a medical diagnosis that's somewhat more specific than "oblivious".
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Shinra

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Re: Re: Cheerful News
« Reply #16 on: June 03, 2012, 08:53:44 PM »

That's great for him, but seeing a high profile case that seems to provide grist for the "women just make up rape allegations for fun" defence making the news doesn't exactly set me walking on sunshine.

Considering that that's actually what happened in this case, I think it's a pretty fair point that attention is being brought to it actually having occured.

When our justice system is built on the presumption of innocence and the idea that you are only guilty if it can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and you can still be convicted when there is literally 0 evidence and the accuser stands to gain from the lie (in this case, she stood to gain 3 quarters of a million dollars) maybe we should be asking if the victim is lying instead of mincing around the point because we're afraid someone is going to get offended and accuse the news media or the state of blaming the victim.
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Classic

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Re: Re: Cheerful News
« Reply #17 on: June 03, 2012, 09:09:31 PM »

Shinra...

There can be not enough proof for a conviction without calling the presumed victim a liar.
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Shinra

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Re: Re: Cheerful News
« Reply #18 on: June 03, 2012, 09:18:56 PM »

In this case there wasn't, but the lawyer of the man accused convinced him to cop a plea because he thought he would be convicted on the weight of the victim's statement alone. The accepted logic is that there does not need to be physical evidence in the event of a rape, be it signs of physical attack or a rape kit, and that the fact that the accused is a male and black is motive. This leads to situations like the one this guy was in, where he spent six years in federal prison, was a convicted felon and sex offender, and couldn't get a job anywhere because nobody will hire a rapist.

Rape victims experience horrific emotional trauma that they will live with for the rest of their lives. I'm not trying to diminish that. Somebody convicted of a felony is also going to experience the horrific trauma of being in a prison and enjoy the side effect of never being able to get gainful employment for the rest of their life. If we're going to essentially destroy the prospect of an individual ever having a meaningful existence - when they're at the age of 16, no less - then we need to make the standards for that destruction more stringent then they are.

"X's word against Y" should never be the grounds for a conviction for anything pretty much ever, let alone a life-ending felony.

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There can be not enough proof for a conviction without calling the presumed victim a liar.

And for the record: that's not how the justice system is supposed to work in America. In the case of he-said she-said like this, it's the prosecution's job to prove there was a victim at all. The presumption of guilt from the onset - even by a casual observer such as yourself after it was proven no crime took place - is why wrongful convictions like this happen in the first place.

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Classic

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Re: Re: Cheerful News
« Reply #19 on: June 03, 2012, 11:19:30 PM »

The presumption of guilt from the onset
Nowhere did I presume anyone's guilt, and it is offensive that you'd ever think I would.
Why would you even think that?
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