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Feds to Argue Rwandan Witnesses Inherently Liars

By Eric Lipman

Last year, 83-year-old Lazare Kobagaya was charged with immigration violations for allegedly failing to disclose in his immigration papers that he was a participant in the atrocities committed in Rwanda in 1994. I think we can all understand why he chose to roll the dice on that one. Checking off the "Y" next to "mobilizing attackers to commit arson and murder" probably gets your application on the express bus to rejection land. Today, in federal district court in Wichita, Judge Monti Belot is holding a hearing, at which a government expert will apparently try to convince the judge that two defense witnesses should be precluded from testifying at trial, as "Rwandan witnesses are inherently unreliable because they're controlled by the government of the African nation." Though the AP's story is short on details, it sounds as though the preclusion argument is that all Rwandans lie, so we shouldn't let them testify. Last I checked, credibility was an issue for the jury. If the two proposed defense witnesses are being proffered as experts, and this is a Daubert challenge, I hope the government's argument is better than the blurb makes it sound. Timothy Longman, director of the African Studies Center at...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).