Litigation

U.S. Judge: Courts Can Handle Detainee Trials

By Peter Hardin

Judge Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., says he is confident the  court system can handle terror trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

“I think federal judges are capable of trying whatever comes our way,” he remarked while addressing a breakfast hosted by the American Bar Association, according to a post in The Blog of Legal Times. He also declined to jump into the recent fierce debate over trying detainees in civilian courts or by military commissions (see Gavel Grab posts on the planned New York terror trials of five 9/11 co-defendants, and related issues.)

Judge Lamberth rejected questions about civilian court security, raised by some people who criticized U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to hold certain detainee trials in New York. The judge said domestic street gangs can be more deadly.

“The gangs are more murderous, I think, than some of these people at Guantanamo,” the Associated Press quoted the judge as saying. “They’ve certainly killed their share of witnesses here.”

The District of Columbia could see terror trials planned there, as could courts in the Eastern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia, according to Judge Lamberth.

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 18, 2009 (boomark / email).