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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (72405)	6/16/2008 8:04:47 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542059

I'm assuming that's sarcasm, and it stings...I just don't see how the complicating factors require us to throw out our entire system of jurisprudence and start from scratch. It wasn't intended to sting but rather to tease out some reflection on and discussion of the various aspects of our criminal justice system and how each of them might be applied to these enemy combatants before cavalierly brushing off any differences, possibly critical differences. For example, how do you deliver a miranda warning on a battlefield? How are the mechanics the same or different? How does doing so affect other aspects of the mission, such as the gathering of intel or the safety of those delivering the warning? And how might a change of policy to require them alter the system? If you're suggesting that it will never happen in the case of terrorists, because somehow they are completely different from all other types of criminals we have every had to deal with, then I would just want to know why you think so. Case in point. Are terrorists just like that forger you arrested in Pasadena? No, they probably aren't "completely different," but shouldn't we analyze how they are alike or different and whether that matters before assuming that proving conspiracy is just as likely? I can easily identify some ways in which they are critically different, I think. (Let me say up front that all I know about criminal conspiracy I learned from watching police procedurals on TV. That leaves considerable room for error. <g>) Criminal conspiracy charges are a tool we most commonly associate with white collar criminals. White collar criminals are pretty much like you and me except they're dishonest. Hardened, violent criminals, not so much. Terrorists, even less. Many/most are doing what they do for a cause, not for making a living. Many/most are prepared to suffer and die. They do not fear our punishment in the same way your typical stock broker caught with his hands in the till does. There is not as much we can offer terrorists to buy their testimony. We don't have access to their families so we can't offer anything of value there. Maybe certain considerations while imprisoned, not the panoply of considerations we can offer ordinary American criminals like house arrest or community service. If they are not incarcerated, though, that would likely be a death sentence at the hands of their fellows. Surely Islamofascists would take action to dispose of a rat. What we do ordinarily is to put the rats into the witness protection program. Hiding in plain sight is not so easy for a non-English-speaking foreign terrorist in Des Moines. If we send them home as payment for their testimony, they will either be killed or rejoin the fray, which is not a good thing. Since conspiracy convictions, particularly for crimes in the planning stages, rely mostly on turning co-conspirators, we are at a real disadvantage, I think. It seems to me that, before brushing off the difficulty of fitting them into our criminal justice system, something encouraging about the feasibility of convicting them must be identified.