Andrew McCarthy deconstructs Eric Holder
Andrew McCarthy is a former US attorney that worked in the Justice Department, and worked on the cases to try to the 1993 World Trade Center bombers including the "Blind Sheikh," Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to the prosecution of terrorists that we have captured, and he's taken Eric Holder to the woodshed before over the idiotic notion that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and five of his confederates would receive a fairer trial in civilian court. Today is no exception:
Eric Holder is chief among the many Obama Justice Department lawyers who, during the Bush years, donated their services as private attorneys for the benefit of al-Qaeda terrorists. His motive was to frustrate efforts to treat our wartime enemies as just that: wartime enemies. He preferred the failed law-enforcement model that regards our enemies as garden-variety criminals — the counterterrorism approach he had overseen as deputy attorney general while America was serially attacked during the Clinton years.
Nothing has changed. As the Obama administration’s attorney general, Holder is still gratuitously taking positions that help the likes of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Witness his baffling suggestion this weekend that it would be better to try KSM and five other 9/11 plotters in civilian court because of the purported legal uncertainty about whether guilty pleas are permissible in military death-penalty cases.
To be clear, I am not contending that the attorney general approves of terrorists or that his purpose is to help them. I am saying that Holder is in the thrall of an ideology, the inevitable effect of which is to aid our enemies. This progressive ideology, shared by many legal elites, holds that the use of military legal processes during military conflicts — processes to which the United States has resorted throughout our history — is somehow a greater danger to us than international terrorism itself.
The attorney general would doubtless like to see al-Qaeda chieftains convicted and executed, but only if it is done on his own terms. That means using civilian courts, regardless of whether this rewards the terrorists who have committed the worst atrocities with valuable due-process advantages; betrays the underlying imperative of international humanitarian law to protect civilians from being targeted for attacks; and makes it more difficult to convict and execute war criminals.
The attorney general’s latest claims are grossly misleading. First, he asserts that guilty pleas are permitted in civilian capital cases — as if to imply that only in military courts must we have burdensome trials in which juries must approve the death penalty. Try telling that one to the Moussaoui jury.
At his civilian trial in Virginia, Zacharias Moussaoui did plead guilty to participation in the 9/11 plot. But that plea did not end the case. Under federal law, capital cases are bifurcated: Even if a defendant admits guilt, the issue of punishment must still be tried to the jury. Holder conveniently elides mention not only of this fact but of the history of capital punishment in civilian international-terrorism cases. In the 16 years since the federal death penalty was restored in 1994 — 16 years throughout which the United States has been ravaged by jihadist terror — the Justice Department has approved capital charges for exactly three defendants: Moussaoui and two of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombers. In each case, civilian juries rejected the death penalty. If Holder is saying there’s a better chance these savages will be executed if they are tried in the civilian system (and that is precisely what he’s implying), there is nothing to support that claim.
Second, the claim Holder floats that guilty pleas may not be permissible in capital military-commission cases is meritless. Holder did not explain his theory, but we can speculate that he is referring to a suggestion spun last year in a New York Times report. The paper intimated that federal law might be ambiguous on whether guilty pleas were allowed. Positing that “military law” is the “model for the military commission rules,” the Times report pointed out that, in courts martial for members of our armed forces, guilty pleas are prohibited in capital cases. Prosecutors must prove guilt even if a soldier wants to plead guilty. The Times, which is resolutely anti–death penalty, added that this was to “ensure fairness.”
Nice try. Military commissions are not courts martial, even though it has been a project of the Left — when it is not trying to endow our terrorist enemies with all the rights of American civilians — to vest them with the same legal protections our law gives to American soldiers. Commissions, moreover, do not take place pursuant to the “model” of military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Instead, they are governed by a special statute, the Military Commissions Act (MCA).
Unlike the UCMJ, the MCA provides no bar to guilty pleas in capital cases. To the contrary, MCA Section 949i(b) states that when an accused pleads guilty to “any charge or specification” (capital charges are not mentioned, much less exempted), a finding of guilt “may be entered immediately without a full vote” of the commission. At that point, the commission moves on to consider sentencing. A different MCA provision, Section 949m, directs that commission members must be unanimous in imposing death.
So where are Holder and the Times getting the idea that guilty pleas are not permitted? They are obviously relying on a portion of Section 949m that says an accused may not be sentenced to death unless he is “convicted of the [capital] offense by the concurrence of all the [commission] members[.]” But that provision is plainly talking about what happens when an accused pleads not guilty, necessitating a trial. It is not silently undertaking to supersede the aforementioned Sec. 949i(b), which separately governs guilty pleas.
As they say, read it all folks. At least by reading this, it will serve as a primer for what actually occurs in a military commission. And based on reading this piece by Mr. McCarthy, it looks as if the new Arizona immigration law, referred to as SB 1070, isn't the only thing Eric Holder hasn't read.
He apparently hasn't read what the Military Commissions Act says, and that makes him incompetent when dealing with these matters. He needs to admit his mistake and let the commissions take place. Don't put these animals through the US civilian court system. It wasn't designed to deal with such matters, and Holder knows this. But ideology seems to trump intelligence in this administration, especially in the Justice Department.
Publius II
Eric Holder is chief among the many Obama Justice Department lawyers who, during the Bush years, donated their services as private attorneys for the benefit of al-Qaeda terrorists. His motive was to frustrate efforts to treat our wartime enemies as just that: wartime enemies. He preferred the failed law-enforcement model that regards our enemies as garden-variety criminals — the counterterrorism approach he had overseen as deputy attorney general while America was serially attacked during the Clinton years.
Nothing has changed. As the Obama administration’s attorney general, Holder is still gratuitously taking positions that help the likes of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Witness his baffling suggestion this weekend that it would be better to try KSM and five other 9/11 plotters in civilian court because of the purported legal uncertainty about whether guilty pleas are permissible in military death-penalty cases.
To be clear, I am not contending that the attorney general approves of terrorists or that his purpose is to help them. I am saying that Holder is in the thrall of an ideology, the inevitable effect of which is to aid our enemies. This progressive ideology, shared by many legal elites, holds that the use of military legal processes during military conflicts — processes to which the United States has resorted throughout our history — is somehow a greater danger to us than international terrorism itself.
The attorney general would doubtless like to see al-Qaeda chieftains convicted and executed, but only if it is done on his own terms. That means using civilian courts, regardless of whether this rewards the terrorists who have committed the worst atrocities with valuable due-process advantages; betrays the underlying imperative of international humanitarian law to protect civilians from being targeted for attacks; and makes it more difficult to convict and execute war criminals.
The attorney general’s latest claims are grossly misleading. First, he asserts that guilty pleas are permitted in civilian capital cases — as if to imply that only in military courts must we have burdensome trials in which juries must approve the death penalty. Try telling that one to the Moussaoui jury.
At his civilian trial in Virginia, Zacharias Moussaoui did plead guilty to participation in the 9/11 plot. But that plea did not end the case. Under federal law, capital cases are bifurcated: Even if a defendant admits guilt, the issue of punishment must still be tried to the jury. Holder conveniently elides mention not only of this fact but of the history of capital punishment in civilian international-terrorism cases. In the 16 years since the federal death penalty was restored in 1994 — 16 years throughout which the United States has been ravaged by jihadist terror — the Justice Department has approved capital charges for exactly three defendants: Moussaoui and two of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombers. In each case, civilian juries rejected the death penalty. If Holder is saying there’s a better chance these savages will be executed if they are tried in the civilian system (and that is precisely what he’s implying), there is nothing to support that claim.
Second, the claim Holder floats that guilty pleas may not be permissible in capital military-commission cases is meritless. Holder did not explain his theory, but we can speculate that he is referring to a suggestion spun last year in a New York Times report. The paper intimated that federal law might be ambiguous on whether guilty pleas were allowed. Positing that “military law” is the “model for the military commission rules,” the Times report pointed out that, in courts martial for members of our armed forces, guilty pleas are prohibited in capital cases. Prosecutors must prove guilt even if a soldier wants to plead guilty. The Times, which is resolutely anti–death penalty, added that this was to “ensure fairness.”
Nice try. Military commissions are not courts martial, even though it has been a project of the Left — when it is not trying to endow our terrorist enemies with all the rights of American civilians — to vest them with the same legal protections our law gives to American soldiers. Commissions, moreover, do not take place pursuant to the “model” of military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Instead, they are governed by a special statute, the Military Commissions Act (MCA).
Unlike the UCMJ, the MCA provides no bar to guilty pleas in capital cases. To the contrary, MCA Section 949i(b) states that when an accused pleads guilty to “any charge or specification” (capital charges are not mentioned, much less exempted), a finding of guilt “may be entered immediately without a full vote” of the commission. At that point, the commission moves on to consider sentencing. A different MCA provision, Section 949m, directs that commission members must be unanimous in imposing death.
So where are Holder and the Times getting the idea that guilty pleas are not permitted? They are obviously relying on a portion of Section 949m that says an accused may not be sentenced to death unless he is “convicted of the [capital] offense by the concurrence of all the [commission] members[.]” But that provision is plainly talking about what happens when an accused pleads not guilty, necessitating a trial. It is not silently undertaking to supersede the aforementioned Sec. 949i(b), which separately governs guilty pleas.
As they say, read it all folks. At least by reading this, it will serve as a primer for what actually occurs in a military commission. And based on reading this piece by Mr. McCarthy, it looks as if the new Arizona immigration law, referred to as SB 1070, isn't the only thing Eric Holder hasn't read.
He apparently hasn't read what the Military Commissions Act says, and that makes him incompetent when dealing with these matters. He needs to admit his mistake and let the commissions take place. Don't put these animals through the US civilian court system. It wasn't designed to deal with such matters, and Holder knows this. But ideology seems to trump intelligence in this administration, especially in the Justice Department.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 10:16 AM
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