To anyone who supports tribunals: would you be tried under military tribunal?

You're a Muslim Arab accused of a crime. Would you face a military tribunal? Keep in mind that 80% of the jury are Bushie fundamentalists (didn't almost 80% vote for Bush?), and knowing that most on the jury intensely dislike Muslims because they've been fighting against them for 8 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course you would not, as would any sane person. These are kangaroo courts, not due process, and to prove it nobody out there would choose a kangaroo court over a legitimate court if you were accused of a crime, let alone a Muslim.

What does that prove?

You can't answer the question, apparently. +1 for my argument.

Thanks!

It proves that judging the validity of a trial system based upon the opinions of those being tried is a ridiculous standard.

Should we stop doing criminal trials in the US? After all, I'm sure criminals would choose not to go on trial.

I'm not saying we let them go free, I'm asking which system you'd be tried under if you were to stand trial for a crime.

People get choices all the time, such as trial by jury, or even whether or not to testify, or to take the fifth. I'm asking you for a similar choice, and you are childishly dodging with "I'd rather go free." Bravo, another dodge.

with "I hate and distrust the U.S. military . . ." just so we're all clear on where you stand.

I don't trust a politician

There, I said it. Whew, what a load off my shoulders.

Anything posted after that great response is, in fact, 'Toast'.

In the criminal system you get choices: such as trial by jury or by a judge.

I'm asking you, if you were suspected of committing a crime and had a choice, which system would you choose?

Since you dodged as well, I'll assume you know. Thanks for playing.

or where your trial is held (city, town or county) and you don't get to personally select each jury member. You also don't get to choose if you want bail or not.

you can throw out jury members you don't like, and you can petition for no bail.

The first is readily granted, the second is an option, the third is a petition that can be granted or not depending on the crime.

Your fifth amendment rights are an option you exercise.

So I'm asking you a question, and you should either answer or just say "I can't answer that because..."

And people don't want to see it.

Kinda like torture photos.

Under the Geneva treaties, when a prisoner of war is charged with being an 'illegal combatant', that is, a person who has committed as a combatant acts which violate the laws of war, this determination is to be made by a military court convened by the captor. As usual, it is in the details that the Devil resides. Said military court is to be comparable to that before which a member of the convening military's own soldiers would be brought for trial on a criminal charge. Thus, at the very least, the same rules of evidence, the same quality of representation by counsel, etc., must be employed. Not having seen the new rules under which President Obama's administration proposes to employ these 'commissions', it is not possible for me to either condemn or support them. That the rules set forth by the Bush administration were not in line with treaty requirements was very clear; indeed, the most egregious violation was that the determination of 'illegal combatant' status was simple Executive fiat.

by a 100% white jury in the Deep South circa 1910.

A joke rubber stamp and you know it. You can hide behind the Geneva treaties all you want, but

1) you would never want to be subject to this kangaroo court if you had a choice and
2) you know that the jury is overwhelmingly prejudiced

Prisoners of war are tried by their captors. That is international law.

People up on charges never have a choice of courts to face, beyond an occasional appeal for change in location of the court, which does not change the fundamental constitution of the body they face.

Given the splendid quality of some defense work performed to date by officers in the Judge Advocate General branch, you may be selling the sitting officers a bit short in your predictions.

Please, these people were dragged out of Afghanistan or Iraq, sent of to an offshore prison camp, tortured and never accused of any crime.

I will not accept the use of "Geneva" or "international law" to defend this, we have FORFEITED that right.

Being a POW is not a crime. We did not have military tribunals for being "the enemy".

WHAT are they accused of, exactly, other than the handful that they say they have some evidence tying them to 9/11.

To be a POW, you must be a member of a regular military or militia with a clear and static hierarchy of command, that carries arms openly, that possesses uniforms and an insignia visible from a distance, and that obeys and respects all rules and laws of war. Most of the detainees we have captured in Afghanistan and Iraq fulfill none of the Geneva conditions for POW status.

They are still afforded Geneva protections, but they may be tried for criminal behavior. Conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, most likely.

Tried for Criminal Behavior, lol.

man alive.

They are not POWs. They are afforded Geneva protections. They are suspected of committing crimes. They will be tried for those crimes in courts providing full Geneva protections.

I'm telling you that no due process can happen with a jury of 80% Bush supporters.

You yourself would not choose to be tried under this absurd tribunal system, which is evidence enough that even you don't think you'd receive adequate protection.

appeal before the Supreme Court, proves your argument is nonsense and without factual basis.

What a clownish comparison.


I'm actually saying that we try them under the system most consistent with the Supreme Court: a system outside the military.

And you again dodged (again shamelessly)...

The test of due process would still have to pass the approval of the Supreme Court.


Your allegation that a muslim in this system cannot receive a fair hearing has already been disproved by the very successful record their attorneys have in representing them in the system.

You don't seem to be aware of the fact that the Bush administration lost every one of its cases and the Gitmo attorneys have won every single case. It proves that your allegation that they are inherently denied a fair hearing is absurd and not consistent with the facts (which you don't seem to be aware of).


Of course the opposite is also true; that simply because they have been successful so far is not a guarantee that they will be treated fairly in the future, but that is not what your OP is stating.

Your allegation that a muslim defendant is inherently disadvantaged and it is impossible for them to receive fair treatment under military tribunals has been disproved by the fact that the SCOTUS has asserted jurisdiction and accepted responsibility for ensuring due process.

To make it really specifically clear: Military tribunals do not operate outside of the US system of justice and are still supervised by the Supreme Court. They may have different standards on the admission of evidence and other areas, but the basic tests of due process will apply.

Guilty as charged.

I would not choose to be tried under a tribunal in America, because I am an American citizen in America. Were India and Pakistan to declare war on each other, and were I to go to Kashmir to plant bombs to kill Pakistanis, and were I to be captured by the Pakistani army, I would expect to be tried by a Pakistani military tribunal offering me nothing but my Geneva rights as a civilian on a battlefield. It would be nice if they would try me in a civilian court. It would be nicer still if they would give me a nice glass of cold water and send me on my way with nary but a warning. So what? I'm not entitled to either.

you definitely support it for others.

This really is not a legal question, it's a basic question of fairness. You can cite all the law you want, but the fact remains: you would not want this for yourself, yet you support it for others.

ZOMG HYPOCRISY.

I'm saying if you were accused of a crime, which system would you choose? That has nothing to do with "ZOMG I CANT ANSWER HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS BECAUSE OF LAWS BLAHBLABHBLAH"

I doubt you would resist a question so strenuously if someone asked you if you preferred a trial by jury or by judge (another option under our current justice system). You would probably just give an answer without resorting to the absurdities you have (I didn't commit crimes! I want to be let go! etc) But here, it's pretty obvious you're fighting not to answer the question because you know the answer hurts.

I might as well ask, "would you like to go to prison?" You would say, "no, prison would be a restriction of my rights. I have the right to not be thrown in prison arbitrarily." It wouldn't be a particularly useful means of proving that prison is unfair (legal as it may be), because it strips the context from the discussion. Prison is not something that people choose; it is something the government imposes, and the imposition of which is performed according to the legal rights people possess. Someone who commits a felony and is convicted of it would certainly prefer not to go to jail, but that doesn't matter.

When you ask, "would you prefer a criminal court or a military tribunal," the obvious answer is "a criminal court." However, that doesn't matter. By law, foreign detainees are not afforded the right to a criminal court; this is a result of their nationality and the context in which they were detained. They are afforded the right to certain legal protections, and that's it. The fact that criminal courts are preferable doesn't suggest anything about fairness or about legality.

Thank you, that's what I wanted. I know it was proceeded by many legal arguments, but again this is not a legal question. It's more a question of which system you'd take, not if you want to go to jail (don't bring that up, it's quite ridiculous). Would you say a trial by jury decision = whether or not you want to go to jail? I thought not, yet it is a legitimate question made in every criminal trial.


One last question and I'll leave you alone. You said "the obvious answer is 'a criminal court'". Why do you say it's obvious? Why do you label it "obvious"?

a criminal court has a lower possibility of abuse due to the long-established tradition of placing the events of the trial on the public record. That is not something which can be done systematically for defendants whose cases by nature exist entirely within the military/intelligence world, in which state secrets related to ongoing operations do exist and exist for good reason. That is why soldiers appear in front of courts-martial and not criminal courts, and that is why the Geneva Convention provides for POWs and detained civilians to be tried by fair military tribunals or courts-martial.

I'm asking a hypothetical moral question. One that, apparently, you can't answer.

Truth sucks, huh?

Just about everyone is certain he or she behaves in a highly moral manner, and yet people do such different things. Agreement is impossible.

By the standards you are trying to press, it would be hard to say anyone, anywhere, receives a fair trial. Even in ordinary criminal cases, jurors tend to presume arrest indicates guilt, and seldom have much in common with the life and situation and experiences of the accused.

But I believe anyone who can't answer a moral question either has impaired morality, or is moral but is afraid of the answer.

The thread's premise is a moral question, so I don't know why you'd bother answering any of it if you're unprepared to give an answer.

You posed a subject for discussion on a public forum. It struck my interest, and moved me to reply, mostly because the thing was so loaded in construction and leaden in presentation that it needed a bit of tone in the following discussion to bring it up to community standards.

You may consider that you posed a 'moral' dilemma, but you did not. You posed a policy question concerning legal practice, starting from the unexamined premise that the legal practice was in error. So the first thing to do was to point out what the most basic legal directives on the matter are. My comments have been pretty much confined to that, save for some general observations on the inclinations of juries and the quality of counsel provided by J.A.G. officers to date, when working in a deeply flawed and substantially illegal version of military legal process.

prepared to discuss religious or historical questions.

But hey, that's just me.

"On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

Yet you still are trying to answer the question without giving an answer.

Priceless :rofl:

There's no hope for them.

These same people were screaming bloodly murder at tribunals 6 months ago, and now it's an about-face, as if they don't know these tribunals are a joke. What a sham these sheep have become.

It is violation of the laws that must be proved before a military tribunal; it cannot be assumed before trial.

As a matter of practical fact, the "carries arms openly, that possesses uniforms and an insignia visible from a distance" element is so routinely violated by partisan and guerrilla forces, which are recognized as legitimate belligerents, that it has lost any real force.

The Geneva conventions specifically allow for the capture of both POWs and civilians who are engaged in hostilities in a war zone. We also have the explicit permission of both the Afghan and Iraqi governments to capture and transport anyone suspected of engaging in hostilities against those governments within their respective territories.

Do you have any idea what has been going on the past 7 years?

People were taken who weren't even in fucking uniform, they were handed over for REWARD MONEY, because tortured prisoners named them, because of every absurd reason. They had nothing on the vast majority of them which is why so many were released after years of imprisonment, it would have been a horrible embarrassment. But hey, it's ok to just round up people in a foreign country WE INVADED and call them "enemy combatants" and put them on trial for being there.

It's true that many were taken wrongly. They were released. That doesn't mean that the United States did not have the right to detain them. (The fact that they weren't in uniform actually significantly decreases the Geneva protections the detainees have). The United States certainly did not have the right to torture them or to hold them indefinitely without charges, but neither are related to these tribunals: the tribunals will require charges, will require the evidence to be presented to the defendant, and will forbid any evidence gained through torture from being admitted.

This is particularly true of the first wave of captives at Guantanamo, many of who were simply unfortunates sold for bounty.

You should have just said so.

Those soldiers are still at war in Afghanistan and Iraq; how can one expect a reasonably prejudice-free trial?

At least in the US criminal system, they would get non-combatant civilians as jurors, and judges who are not actually on the payroll of the military.

You say I'm selling them short, yet they voted for Bush at every opportunity. This suggest their judgment is severely impaired.

A panel of U.S. citizens convened to try a 'suspected terrorist' might well prove the most biased 'hanging jury' conceivable.

There are also curiousities of jurisdiction. If, say, an Afghan citizen taken in arms against U.S. forces is to be tried for a crime committed against Afghan civilians, it is hard to see what Federal crime he could have committed, though the right to determine he is an illegal combatant is squarely assigned by treaty to a U.S. military court.

Again, Sir, your quarrel is with the Geneva Accords, which direct that the captor determine the 'illegal combatant' status of a prisoner of war charged withy violating the laws of war. Whether or not you feel it to be, or even whether or not it actually is fair, does not matter: it is the law.

A jury of American civilians in a terrorism case... wouldn't it be hard to find someone impartial for that?

There is no choice.

Hence Gitmo.

ya yr right.

I was watching the oral arguments from December of Arar v Ashcroft... the Canadian that we deported to Syria who was tortured for a year, and our government defense was disgusting, basically, Arar was at the airport in new york but wasn't officially under US jurisdiction--because he hadn't gone through customs-- so he wasn't entitled to due process.

But if he's not under our jurisdiction, then why are we allowed to send him anywhere other than his home country? To be tortured?? So maddening. (The DOJ defense attorney, Kohn, retired in February)

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=282779-1

However. At the end of the day they will be judged by members of the US military. I honestly cannot see how a fair trail can occur when the jury is made up of people who consider you the "enemy".

You might as well convene a 100% Chinese jury, all of whom were present at Nanking during the Japanese atrocities, to try a Japanese citizen.

with all those Allied judges?

:thumbsup:

Were they current members of the military *still engaged in a war* against them?

that was gained through torture or forced confession.

But at the same time, those Nazis had huge amounts of documentation and especially witness testimony to prove their guilt.

Bush would not try these captured men in normal courts because he had little evidence outside of what was extracted by torture. The only chance he has of a conviction (unlike your flawed Nazi example) is with a rubber stamp kangaroo court.

But again, a dodge for you! +1 for me.

I'm saying that the previous administration did not have sufficient evidence to get a conviction so he tortured one out.

His plan was to send this to a tribunal where these standards would be allowed.

The point is this: due to the fact that they apparently do not have sufficient evidence, the only way they stand a chance of convicting is through a kangaroo court.

These aren't people being nabbed off the streets, they are people fighting on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

And BTW, most of the people in Afghanistan aren't Arabs. The largest ethnic group is Pashtun.

And several detainees claim they were apparently simply nabbed, not necessarily even fighting, and evidence shows they were not on the battlefield.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-04-gitmo-update_x.htm

Evidence obtained by torture is not permitted. As I understand it, the lawyers have said they are going to try about 20 detainees under these procedures which means that the prosecution doesn't think they can convict the rest.

so they don't have much of a case. The only way they have a chance at conviction is with a highly-prejudiced jury.

who were convicted and given the death penalty with little/no evidence would strongly disagree.

Or appeals for that matter.

in the late 19th century. But there was no justice.

They were known as the circuit courts and they not only handled appeals but a lot of original jurisdiction as well. They were very under staffed.

Also it's basically impossible to appeal something if you don't have an attorney.

I would prefer to not be captured and tried by a foreign nation, but if I am, I would prefer to have full Geneva protections.

or the military tribunal system if you had the choice.

You gave me your dodge, and thanks for playing. +1 for me.

People get choices all the time, such as trial by jury, or even whether or not to testify, or to take the fifth.

You answered above, so I won't press it.

I would prefer to not go to jail, but if I commit a crime, I will go to jail. I would prefer to not be tried by a tribunal, but if I am captured by a foreign army on suspicion of criminal acts, I will be tried by a tribunal.

Because under my hypothetical, you would already be standing trial for a crime one way or another, regardless of which choices you made.

I didn't ask what you would accept as a citizen or a national, I asked what you would prefer. You've said if you were an American citizen you'd ask for a normal criminal trial, but if you were a national then a tribunal.

I don't really care about where they found you, I'm asking if you were a Muslim and looked like an Arab, would you PREFER standing trial under military tribunal or the criminal justice system?

And TBH, if you were a foreign national, I doubt you'd be the lone holdout requesting a military tribunal. The detainees don't want a tribunal for obvious reasons, and it's disingenuous for you to claim you'd want it if you were in their shoes. You look to me like Shawn Hannity claiming he'd be waterboarded.

and have not studied history. I see some posters to this thread have.

You are confusing a military trial with a citizen's right to trial.

:toast:

you might wish to establish some actual, you know, rules of your game.

Start first with your assertion that "military tribunal"="kangaroo court." I gave an example of a military tribunal that very few would consider a "kangaroo court"--so you changed the rules. In essence, you somehow needed to show that some military tribunals were OK, so long as the results were as we wished.

More than 80% of the Nuremberg judges were from countries fighting against the Germans.

You further assumed that there was no evidence save what was gotten from torture (which, under Obama's new rules, would now be inadmissible). Funny, though, you didn't mention that until it was necessary to do so.

You also dismiss those who see that there are more choices than the binary ones you present. There is nothing logically wrong with not wanting to stand trial at all. Most sane people would not want to stand trial in any form regardless of guilt or innocence.

But of course, you'd rather have us play your flawed game, with flexible rules. +1, I guess.

Me, I'll take my chances with a game that has far clearer rules:

"God grant me the willingness to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference."

because the true answer bothers you too much.

If you were to stand trial for a crime, you have many binary options (5th amendment, to testify or not, trial by judge or jury). To equate options to "I don't want to stand trial" is a huge dodge. I've given you a hypothetical, and you won't answer it.

Sorry, again I'm giving you a binary (of which there are numerous under our justice system as listed above), and simply labeling it "binary and therefore invalid" is logically incorrect since I've given you examples of binary answers.

Try again

Manipulating the hypothetical, indeed.

You leave far too many elements out for this to be a fair choice. However, you have no problems filling them in to advance to your desired destination:

P1: I'd rather go free.
DM: Not a choice. Dodge. +1 for DM.
P2: Nothing is necessarily wrong with military tribunals. They are bound by Geneva.
DM: So you'd be OK with a lynch mob. Dodge.
P3: Nuremberg was a military tribunal.
DM: But the Nazis had evidence. In your case, you don't. Analogy flawed, and dodge. +1.
P4: POW or not, they'd still have Geneva protection.
DM: But your jury is biased.
P5: SCOTUS has always ruled for Gitmo prisoners.
DM: So try them like the SCOTUS. Dodge.
P4: If I were indeed committing a crime and captured, I'd expect a tribunal, even though I'd prefer to go free or be tried under US criminal law.
DM: Wrong question. You just don't want to answer my way because it hurts.
P4: Stupid, meaningless question. It's obvious a criminal court is preferable.
DM: Yes. Was that so hard?
P2: Legal questions should be answered with legal analysis.
DM: But I wasn't asking a legal question, I was asking a moral one. Obviously, you have problems with morality.
P2: Even under a criminal court, there is no guarantee against juror bias. In fact, they may be more biased.
...
P6: If I were captured, I'd expect a tribunal.
DM: You were just picked off the street--not fighting. Also, your jury is biased because of a racist jury in the South in the 19th century, where there was no justice.
P3: This is stupid. Let's play Calvinball.
DM: Aw, c'mon--you just don't want to see things my way. But I'll give you another chance.

setting or the judges who oversee them. The government makes that determination. Lawyers get a say in jury selection, but even then they don't get to pick and choose the entire jury.

Do you know anyone who went on trail in a U.S. Court and got to personally select their own judge, jury or venue? Yeah, I didn't think so.

I've outlined them above.

I've asked you to make a hypothetical choice, this isn't rocket science.

and you'd respond "I'd rather go free."

Yeah, I'm sure you'd say that. :eyes: Don't be absurd, just answer the question as it's posed.

to make up the jury.

And FYI, any decent lawyer doesn't "ask" you if you "want" to plead the 5th. They tell you if you SHOULD. That's what you pay them for -- expert legal ADVICE. They aren't therapists who sit around asking how you feel about shit.

all of the detainees' lawyers have told them to reject tribunals in favor of normal courts. :rofl: