The recent acquital on all but one count of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani raises at least two constitutional issues for us. First, and this applies to many in the court system, given the amount of time it took for him to reach trial, was he denied his constitutional right to a speedy trial? Slate touches on this question and reminds readers something we covered in 2302, that the right dates at least back to Magna Carta: "to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice."
. . . at no time in the last 800 years has anyone been able to quantify exactly how speedy is speedy. The American Bar Association insists that six months should be the upward limit unless there's a really good reason for extending the deadline. But no one has managed to bring a judge or state legislature around to that point of view. The Supreme Court, for its part, has offered a vague balancing test of harm against justification: That is, if a lengthy pretrial prison stay harms the defendant unjustifiably, the judge may consider dropping the indictment. In the absence of any firm rules, judges usually find a way to explain away delays, since they hate the idea of releasing dangerous criminals just because of dawdling prosecutors. The most common justification is so-called "lack of prejudice"—that is, the accused fails to show that the holdup could undermine his defense.
More seriously is the blowback against the decision to hold a trial in a civilian court -- this was argued to be a crime after all -- rather than a military tribunal. Critics of the decision to hold a trial at all seem upset that a civilian trial even allowed the possibility that a jury might determine a lack of evidence existed to convict the defendant. Legislative critics of the administration want future trials to be handled in military tribunals. Daily Kos wonders if these critics really want summary judgement and execution. Are these critics really challenging the concept of judicial independence? Perhaps they are upset that they cannot control the courts and choose to send the suspects to courts they think likely to render guilty verdicts.
This also raises an issue related to our discussion of abstract and concrete opinions. We probably all agree on the need for fair trials, but do we want them for terrorist suspects? Or is the very fact that they are accused of being terrorists enough to convince us that they are guilty.
- Guilty Until Proven Guilty?
