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SCOTUS rules that Gitmo detainees can challenge their detentions in federal court
Location:
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
WASHINGTON (MCN) — A dejected Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday on Guantanamo Bay detainees, calling it “dangerous and irresponsible.”
The South Carolina Republican, who’s also a military lawyer and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, helped craft the Military Commissions Act and had confidently predicted that it would pass high court muster.
The Supreme Court repudiated Graham in a 5-4 decision, ruling that the 270 alleged terrorists being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba have a constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal courts.
“The court’s ruling makes clear the legal rights given to al-Qaida members today should exceed those provided to the Nazis during World War II,” Graham said. “Our nation is at war. It’s truly unfortunate the Supreme Court did not recognize and appreciate that fact.”
The high court’s decision was its third ruling in four years against the special powers that President Bush has claimed the executive branch has to detain and try suspected terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
With Graham in the lead, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in September 2006 after an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the Bush administration couldn’t set up a new system for prosecuting alleged terrorists without congressional approval.
The fresh Supreme Court decision is a major blow for Graham politically, eviscerating a law that he recently cited as one of the three achievements of his first Senate term that he was most proud of.
“To the extent that Lindsey Graham wanted to get the federal courts out of the process (of prosecuting detainees) altogether, this ruling is an absolute loss for him, and it’s one that Congress can’t go back around,” said Thomas Crocker, a University of South Carolina law professor.
Graham said he’d explore the possibility of drafting a constitutional amendment “to blunt the effect of this decision.”
Any constitutional amendment would be unlikely to move in Congress during the waning months of a lame-duck presidency, however, and at the height of a campaign for the White House.
Graham’s talk of a constitutional amendment indicated how little room the Supreme Court has left him, Sen. John McCain — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — and Bush in their long-standing effort to create a separate trial system outside the federal courts for alleged terrorists.
Graham said that the law gave terrorism suspects at Guantanamo adequate protections, including the power to ask tribunals to review their detainments and to challenge convictions before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Do Gitmo detainees have the right to a civilian trial? Is this another example of judicial activism? Let us know what you think of the latest US Supreme Court decision ...
2 comments from 2 users
1
posted by
drilnliftcrude
on Jun 12, 2008 at 09:12 PM
From what I understand about this, Gitmo terrorists have more rights than that Mexican illegal cutting your neighbors grass. Next, these guys will be finding a liberal activist judge and requesting asylum here. posted by
mattloch
on Jun 12, 2008 at 11:56 PM
Habeas corpus is "dangerous and irresponsible"?
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