August 16, 2007
Conviction of Padilla is Bad News for All Americans, Including Journalists
and Protesters
By Dave Lindorff
With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and detention without
charge permitted, with torture and spying without court oversight all the
rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations between lawyers and
their
clients, and with the judicial branch now infested by rightwing judges who
would have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler's
Germany, for all they seem to care about common law tradition, the only
real
thing holding the line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the
jury.
Now, with Jose Padilla--a US citizen who was originally picked up and held
incommunicado on a military base for three and a half years, publicly
accused (though never charged) with planning to construct and detonate a
so-called "dirty" nuclear device (this a guy without a high school
education!), all based upon hearsay, evidence elicited by torture, and a
few
overheard wiretapped conversations where prosecutors claimed words like
"zucchini" were code for explosive devices-convicted on a charge of
"planning to murder," we see that juries in this era of a bogus "war on
terror" are ready to believe anything.
That last line of defense-the common sense or ordinary citizens in a jury
box-is gone too.
The jury in this case apparently accepted the government's contention that
Padilla was a member of Al Qaeda, and had returned from a trip to Pakistan
full of plans to wreak mayhem on his own country. They cared not a whit
for
the fact that the government had used methods against Padilla (three years
of isolation and total sensory deprivation that had driven him insane)
which
would have made medieval torturers green with envy. They cared not a whit
that there was no real evidence against Padilla.
This was, in the end, a case that most closely resembled the famous
Saturday
Night Live skit in which witches were dunked underwater to "prove" whether
they were in fact witches, and where if they drowned, they were found to
be
innocent. In the end, Padilla's jury simply bought the government's wild
and
wild-eyed story. They decided he hadn't drowned, so he must be guilty.
Padilla can now expect to spend what's left of his life in prison. Since
the
government has already driven him insane, he will have the added burden of
being mentally unbalanced from the outset of his incarceration. His
survival
prospects are not good.
The president promptly thanked the jury for their "good judgment."
We can no doubt expect many more Padillas now that the way has been paved
for this kind of totalitarian approach to law enforcement.
Beginning today, we can expect the government to begin arresting people on
an array of trumped-up charges, locking them away in black sites, on
military bases, or maybe even overseas, subjecting them to all manner of
torture, and then finally bringing them to trial on trumped-up charges. We
can also expect juries, made fearful by breathless warnings that "evil
ones"
mean us and our nation harm, to buy the government's stories.
Who is at risk? That's hard to say, but it's clear that it won't just be
hardened terrorist types. A presidential executive order signed by Bush on
July 17 declares that anything that "undermining efforts to promote
economic
reconstruction (sic) and political reform (sic) in Iraq" could be deemed a
crime making the perpetrator subject to arrest. Would writing essays
critical of the president, the war in Iraq, or the "reconstruction" effort
in Iraq meet that standard? Who knows? Would being interviewed for
commentary as part of a news story on English-language Al Jezeera TV
(which
Bush and Cheney have declared to be sup****tive of the Iraqi insurgency,
and
which Bush re****tedly at one point considered bombing!)? And how about
anti-war protesters? We already have Wa****ngton, DC, under pressure from
Homeland Security, threatening the organization World Can't Wait with
multiple $10,000 fines for posting flyers around the city announcing an
anti-war march and rally on September 15. If they go ahead with the
protest,
will they be joining Padilla?
I have little doubt that this administration would love to lock up
journalistic critics and protesters in military brigs, so the question is:
how would juries respond to charges that American journalists and
protesters
against the war were treacherously undermining the Bush war effort?
I used to be confident that most juries would laugh such cases out of
court.
After the Padilla decision, I'm not so sure.
You want to think that your fellow citizens have at least some measure of
common sense, but this case suggests otherwise--that they are easily
frightened, gullible, and willing to believe the most fantastic claims of
the government.
The future does not look good for freedom in America.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
political
columnist. His most recent book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The
Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006, and now available in
paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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