Legal Commentary

Obama's Detention After Acquittal Policy

By Big Tent Democrat

As someone who has argued that there could be a sound, fair, constitutional and Geneva complaint preventive detention system, it seems that every day the Obama Administration takes positions that would shock even a "centrist" (snark) like me. Glenn Greenwald details the latest:

Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD's General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial.

Unbelievable. Now, if we are going to have preventive detention (and I have explainedx my view on how it could be done before), you can not place someone in preventive detention AFTER acquittal. This is just ridiculous. More . . .

Again, a preventive detention system would have to be based on a POW-style if approach (outlined by me here and here.

It is true of course that prisoners of war can be charged with crimes independent of their status as POWs. But it seems clear that that is not what the Obama Administration is contemplating. The idea appears to be try some detainees on the charges that would establish a combatant status and reserve the right to hold a detainee even if acquitted on such charges.

As Greenwald writes:

Whatever else is true, even talking about imprisoning people based on accusations of which they have been exonerated is a truly grotesque perversion of everything that our justice system and Constitution are supposed to guarantee. That's one of those propositions that ought to be too self-evident to need stating.

Apparently, it requires stating now.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 08, 2009 (boomark / email).