Legal News

On the Constitution and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

By Ashby Jones

An interesting question getting bandied about the blogosphere: Should Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab have been “Mirandized?”

The allegations aren’t pretty: Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a plane and all of its passengers on Christmas Day. Why does he deserve a trial? Why, as a Nigerian citizen who was attempting to do grievous harm to U.S. citizens in U.S. airspace, does he deserve any U.S. constitutional protections at all?

Dick Cheney wondered this shortly after the incident. So did Newt Gingrich. Recently joining the chorus of folks on the right is Sarah Palin, who penned a strongly worded missive on Facebook against the Obama administration on Tuesday. About Abdulmutallab, Palin said:

[He is] an enemy of the United States, not just another criminal defendant . . . It simply makes no sense to treat an al Qaeda-trained operative willing to die in the course of massacring hundreds of people as a common criminal . . . Reports indicate that Abdulmutallab stated there were many more like him in Yemen but that he stopped talking once he was read his Miranda rights. President Obama’s advisers lamely claim Abdulmutallab might be willing to agree to a plea bargain – pretty doubtful you can cut a deal with a suicide bomber.

The former veep candidate also took a shot at Obama’s previous career, saying that “his fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed” and that “the real nature of the terrorist threat requires a commander-in-chief, not a constitutional law professor.”

Left-leaning politico Michael Kinsley, writing in the NYT on Monday, put forth a defense of the Obama administration. Kinsley summarizes the “gruesome anomaly” posed by the situation:

[T]he United States government will blow you to smithereens and consider it a good day's work if you're a Qaeda member dreaming of jihadist glory while residing somewhere outside the United States, but will pay for your lawyer if you get caught in the act within our borders.

So is this where you draw the line? At our borders? Commit a terrorist act outside our borders and it’s an act of war — while inside it’s a common crime? Yes, says Kinsley:

A line has to be drawn somewhere to determine which of these utterly different standards of government behavior is applied where - and the nation's border is as good a line as any.

Start moving the border, argues Kinsley, and interesting things start to happen. Do we take away the rights of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood who was influenced by an Islamic cleric?

And, writes Kinsley, “what about Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? What about the Columbine high school killers? Are they terrorists? Is American justice too good for them?”

LBers, it’s admittedly a complicated and thorny issue. And we think that both Palin’s and Kinsley’s points have much to recommend them. Which makes the better case, in your opinion?

Photo: Thisday

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 06, 2010 (boomark / email).