Judging by the press reports, the evidence was weak and the jury somewhat odd ("On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color -- red, white or blue.") Moreover, the NYT reports this disquieting detail:
The jurors, seven men and five women from Miami-Dade County, would not speak publicly at the courthouse and left through a side entrance. But one juror, who asked that her name not be used, said later in a telephone interview that she had all but made up her mind before deliberations began.
“We had to be sure,” the juror said in Spanish. “We wanted to make sure we went through all the evidence. But the evidence was strong, and we all agreed on that.”
Now, having one's mind pretty much made up is before deliberations start is not unusual. Been there. Jury deliberations are more on the order of trying, sometimes quite vociferously, to reach consensus than actually making up minds. However, given the tone of the juror's remarks, I'm really wondering whether some of those minds weren't made up before the trial started. I mean, look at some of the "evidence":
To find him guilty of the murder conspiracy charge, the jury had to believe that Padilla intended, when he left the United States in 1998, to commit murder overseas.
On this point, the evidence was relatively thin.
On none of the calls does he explicitly call for killing or any other type of violence. A prosecution witness said that he attended the same training camp as Padilla -- to help defend Muslims in places where they might be under attack, not to become a terrorist.
Moreover, prosecutors never identified exactly whom Padilla and his co-defendants wanted to kill.
But in closing arguments prosecutors mentioned al-Qaeda more than 100 times, by one defense count, and urged jurors to in essence think of al-Qaeda and groups affiliated with it as an international murder conspiracy.
Not terribly convincing, particularly since, as Andrew Cohen pointed out in WaPo (from yesterday's post):
[P]eople who have followed this case closely know that Padilla ultimately was convicted on evidence that federal authorities did not believe amounted to a crime when it was gathered back before 2001.
My real concern is not whether or not Padilla is guilty of what are, all things considered, minor charges. Like a few other people, such as Hilzoy in this post and Digby, I'm aghast at the government's methods in this case and their rationale as expressed in what has become known as the "Jacoby Declaration" (pdf). As Hilzoy points out, this is an official government document, reflecting official policy of this administration and, by extension, us. This paragraph alone is chilling:
I assess Padilla's potential intelligence value as very high. I also firmly believe that providing Padilla access to counsel risks loss of a critical intelligence resource, resulting in a grave and direct threat to national security.
That's just the beginning. Remember, we are talking about an American citizen arrested on American soil. (Andrew Sullivan's correspondent notwithstanding, O'Hare International Airport is part of the City of Chicago, which is, although a hotbed of blue-collar liberalism, still an American city. In fact, Chicago's just about as American as it gets.) As Hilzoy points out:
Bear in mind that the Sixth Amendment holds that "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall (...) have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." Of course, Padilla was not at that time charged with any crime, which is why one might have thought that the Fifth Amendment might have been relevant: "No person shall be (...) deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Possibly there are exceptions for prisoners of war, but Padilla was arrested at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, not in the mountains of Afghanistan.
In other words, adhering to Constitutional requirements in the treatment of American citizens is a threat to national security. Sorry, this is unacceptable, and in light of the effects on Padilla of his confinement and the application of what can only be called torture, the case should have been thrown out. See Glenn Greenwald's comments on the possibility of a "fair trial" for Padilla in light of the history of his incarceration.
Worse still, the notion that Padilla received a "fair trial" is dubious, to put it mildly, and will undoubtedly be vigorously contested on appeal. Last year, the New York Times obtained a copy of a video from Padilla's imprisonment which showed techniques that can only be described as torture -- systematic sensory deprivation and gratuitous humiliations which clearly broke Padilla as a human being in every sense that matters, all before he had been charged, let alone convicted, of anything. Whether a person subjected to a torture regimen of that severity can possibly receive a "fair trial," in light of his obvious inability to participate meaningfully in his own defense, looms darkly over this entire proceeding.
There is more on this at Majikthise, including excerpts from an interview with a psychologist who interviewed Padilla:
Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.
Lindsay Beyerstein's comment is worth noting:
By destroying Padilla, the government cheated us all out of justice. If Padilla had gotten the speedy trial that he was entitled to as an American citizen, he might have been legitimately convicted. Instead, the government tortured an American citizen and undercut the legitimacy of their prosecution.
Marty Lederman has an illuminating commentary at Balkinization, as does Jack Balkin (whom I believe I linked to yesterday).
What's interesting about this, although not in the least surprising, is that the administration is crowing about its "victory," even though this case has demonstrated that "enemy combatants" can be tried in the civilian courts, which puts the lie to its rationale for its detention policies. Glenn Greenwald has some relevant comments in the post linked above. (Read Greenwald's whole column -- it's relevant to a lot of what I've said here, and if I'd found it sooner, I could have saved myself some time.)
In the meantime, we are not safer at all, mostly not from our own government.
Update:
See also Barbara O'Brien's comments here and here especially on the right nutjob reaction.
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