Big Break For Bush: Padilla Appeal Denied

[Annie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060403/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_enemy_combatant

Supreme Court Rejects War Powers Case

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

A divided Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a man held until recently as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights, in effect sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers.

Jose Padilla was moved in January to Miami to face criminal charges, and the government argued that the appeal over his indefinite detention was now pointless.

Three justices said the court should have agreed to take up the case anyway: Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

An appeals court panel had all but called for the court to deal with the case, saying it was troubled by the Bush administration's change in legal strategy — after holding Padilla more than three years without charges.

Justices first considered in 2004 whether Padilla's constitutional rights were violated when he was detained as an "enemy combatant" without charges and access to a lawyer. Justices dodged a decision on technical grounds. In a dissent Justice John Paul Stevens said then that "at stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society."

Stevens and two other court members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, explained their votes not to take up Padilla's case.

The fact that Padilla's claims "raise fundamental issues respecting the separation of powers, including consideration of the role and function of the courts," also "counsels against addressing those claims when the course of legal proceedings has made them, at least for now, hypothetical," Kennedy wrote for the three.

Justices are reviewing a second case arising from the government pursuit of terrorists, an appeal by a foreign terrorist suspect facing a military commission on war crimes charges at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Arguments were last week.

Padilla's case was different. It asked the court to clarify how far the government can go when its hunt for terrorists leads to Americans in this country.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and a convert to Islam, was arrested in 2002 after a trip to Pakistan. The government alleged at the time that he was part of a plot to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the United States.

The Bush administration has maintained since 2002 that it had the power to detain him without charges. However, in an abrupt change in strategy, the government late last year brought criminal charges against Padilla.

The charges do not match the long-standing allegations that Padilla sought to blow up apartment buildings. Instead, he was charged with being part of a North American terrorism cell that raised funds and recruited fighters to wage violent jihad outside the United States.

The strategy shift angered a panel of 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., which had ruled last September that Padilla's constitutional rights had not been violated by his detention.

Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative who was named to the bench by President Bush's father, wrote in a decision late last year that the administration's actions left the impression that Padilla had been held in military custody "by mistake."

Ginsburg said Monday that although Padilla is charged in civilian court "nothing prevents the executive (branch) from returning to the road it earlier constructed and defended."

"This case, here for the second time, raises a question 'of profound importance to the nation,'" she wrote.

 

[Mariner]

may not be dead. Very interesting that John Roberts signed the "warning" to Bush. From the New York Times today:

"... Nonetheless, the outcome was not the unalloyed victory for the Bush administration that it might have appeared to be.

Three justices who voted not to hear the case — Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens, along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — filed an unusual opinion explaining their position. They noted that Mr. Padilla, who is now out of military custody and awaiting trial in federal district court in Miami on terrorism-related charges, was entitled to a criminal defendant's full range of protections, including the right to a speedy trial.

Most significant, the three justices warned the administration that the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, stood ready to intervene "were the government to seek to change the status or conditions of Padilla's custody."

The comment was clearly a reference to the sequence of events last fall, when the administration, days before it was due to file a brief in response to Mr. Padilla's Supreme Court appeal, announced that it had obtained a grand jury indictment and planned to shift him to civilian custody."

Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/us/nationalspecial3/04scotus.html?th&emc=th

Mariner

 

[Annie]

may not be dead. Very interesting that John Roberts signed the "warning" to Bush. From the New York Times today:

"... Nonetheless, the outcome was not the unalloyed victory for the Bush administration that it might have appeared to be.

Three justices who voted not to hear the case — Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens, along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — filed an unusual opinion explaining their position. They noted that Mr. Padilla, who is now out of military custody and awaiting trial in federal district court in Miami on terrorism-related charges, was entitled to a criminal defendant's full range of protections, including the right to a speedy trial.

Most significant, the three justices warned the administration that the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, stood ready to intervene "were the government to seek to change the status or conditions of Padilla's custody."

The comment was clearly a reference to the sequence of events last fall, when the administration, days before it was due to file a brief in response to Mr. Padilla's Supreme Court appeal, announced that it had obtained a grand jury indictment and planned to shift him to civilian custody."

Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/us/nationalspecial3/04scotus.html?th&emc=th

Mariner

The original order now stands, the administration does have the right to hold them. All the NYTimes spin is not going to change that, as the gov't has no interest in returning him to military again.