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The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is stomping its foot in the Padilla case. The indictment doesn't match the case the government made for detaining this guy as an "enemy combatant."


Friday, December 2, 2005 Volume 4, Issue 48

http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/d2padilla.html

4TH CIRCUIT WANTS ANSWERS ON PADILLA
Appellate Court Set to Withdraw Opinion After Government Charges

BY MOLLY McDONOUGH

The novelties of law relating to the case against "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla keep coming, one right after another.
After having served three years in detention on a military brig as an enemy combatant accused of trying to set off a radiological dirty bomb targeting Americans, the government finally charged Padilla with a series of crimes.

But last week’s indictment announced by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn’t mention those earlier allegations, the same allegations that persuaded the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule in September that President Bush has the authority to detain an American citizen, captured on American soil, as an enemy combatant.

The new charges are that the Bronx-born Padilla was part of a cell that conspired to support terrorists and "murder individuals who are overseas."

Now the 4th Circuit wants an explanation from the government. And until it gets one, it’s not releasing Padilla to criminal justice authorities for trial in Florida. On top of that, if the 4th Circuit doesn’t like what it hears, it may vacate its order that upheld Padilla’s indefinite detention, much of it incommunicado and without access to counsel.

"The court is obviously troubled by what has been the most salient feature of this case from the beginning: the complete inability of the government, in any legal form, to prove the charges it continuously asserts at press conferences," says Hofstra University law professor Eric M. Freedman, who has consulted on this case for Padilla’s lawyers.

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