"Neither were jurors told that Padilla was held in a Navy brig for 3½ years without charges..."

[ProSense]

CNN (emphasis added):

During the trial, prosecutors played more than 70 intercepted phone calls among the defendants for jurors, including seven that featured Padilla, 36. He is a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam originally arrested as a suspect in a "dirty bomb" plot.

FBI agent John Kavanaugh testified that the calls were made in code, which Padilla used to discuss traveling overseas to fight with Islamic militants, along with side trips to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

In closing arguments, Padilla's lawyers argued he never spoke in code. His voice is heard on only seven of 300,000 taped conversations. Watch a recap of the Padilla case »

They also tried to rebut a key piece of prosecution evidence -- an al Qaeda terrorist training camp application or "mujahedeen data form."

A covert CIA officer -- who testified in disguise at Padilla's trial -- said he was given the form in Afghanistan, and a fingerprint expert found Padilla's prints on the form, prosecutors said.

But Michael Caruso, Padilla's defense attorney, said the prints on the form were not consistent with someone who filled out the document.

"Jose at some point handled the document, but did not fill out the form," Caruso said.

Padilla was originally arrested on dramatic allegations that he planned to set off radioactive "dirty bombs" in the United States. But the current charges are not related to those accusations, and prosecutors did not present the "dirty bomb" plot to the jury.

Neither were jurors told that Padilla was held in a Navy brig for 3½ years without charges before his indictment in the Miami case.

Before trial, his lawyers tried to argue that he was no longer mentally competent to stand trial after years of solitary confinement and abuse -- allegations the government strongly denied.

more

It's important to remember that the Bush Administration did everything it could to deny Padilla even the basic right of habeas corpus. It argued that courts had no power to second guess the President's determination that Padilla was an enemy of the United States and could be held in solitary confinement indefinitely. It argued that no one had the right to contact Padilla and that no one had the right to know what the government was doing to him. It argued that courts should defer to the President's views about who was dangerous and who was not-- that once the President declared a person an enemy, that person had all the process that was due them and courts should respect that determination.

There's a Reason Why We Call it the Bill of Rights-- Government Isn't Supposed to Violate Them

[ProSense]

1. “many lawyers believed he could secure his freedom” because of his treatment.

The evidence presented by the prosecution was sparse at best – taped wiretaps of Hassoun and Jayyousi captured discussions of vegetables and family life – discussions the prosecutors claimed were code for terrorist activities rather than humanitarian aid work as claimed by the defense. For Padilla, the hyped charges that initially presented this “jomoke” (to quote Lew) as a “star recruit” for Al Qaeda amounted to a supposed “application” to AQ with seven Padilla fingerprints on it. Blocked from the trial was evidence of the torture of Padilla during the 3 1/2 years he was held as an enemy combatant.

UPDATE: Jonathan Turley on CNN says “many lawyers believed he could secure his freedom” because of his treatment. “The complication is that he has all these issues where he can appeal.”

Turley is suggesting that the conviction leads now to “a very robust” set of appeals to discuss the conditions under which Padilla was held.

link

Cue wingnuts: Democrats and liberal media expressing sympathy for a convicted terrorist.


edited word.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. Not hard to have sympathy for a wrongful conviction

The treatment of Padilla was barbaric. Inhumane and barbaric.
He barely saw the light of the sun for over 1200 days.
He was blindfolded, shackled, confined in a cramped cell, solitarily, for most all of that time, and never charged with anything.
It is one of the most shameful acts done in America's name in the 6 years of Bush's contrived, macho, chickenhawk's "war on terror".

[ProSense]

2. Two links from

The Volokh Conspiracy (right-leaning legal blog):

Scripts for Supporters (and Opponents) of the Bush Administration

Comments on verdict

[Zodiak]

3. I would say it is right-leaning!!

Now I need a shower.

[ProSense]

4. Jose Padilla & Our Shame

(Updated) Jose Padilla & Our Shame

By Shaun Mullen

A jury returned two guilty verdicts in the case of so-called “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla this afternoon, but no matter how it ruled this man — who is an American citizen — already had been convicted in the court of public opinion by a people inured to the Bush administration-approved coercive techniques.

As the Christian Science Monitor puts it in an editorial:

“Yet, when it came time to put Padilla on trial, the government’s case in Miami included no mention of a dirty bomb . . .

“Although they seek a life sentence, prosecutors introduced no evidence of personal involvement by Padilla in planning or carrying out any specific terrorist plot or violent act.

“There is a reason the government’s case is so thin, legal analysts say. If prosecutors brought the dirty-bomb plot or other alleged illegal actions by Padilla into the Miami case, it would open the door for courtroom scrutiny of the government’s use of coercive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects, including Padilla. And that would have taken jurors deep into the shadowy underside of America’s war on terror – a journey in Padilla’s case that wends its way from his cell on an isolated wing of the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., through covert CIA interrogation sites overseas to an alleged torture chamber in Morocco.

“This is a part of the war on terror the Bush administration would rather keep quiet. But details are emerging. What they reveal is the aggressive – and at times, ruthless – pursuit of intelligence information, and the selective public release of some of that intelligence when it serves the administration’s goals.”

A former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam, Padilla was portrayed as the mastermind of a plot to explode a radioactive “dirty bomb” in an unidentified U.S. city when he was arrested with great fanfare in May 2002 at a Chicago airport.

That sensational charge was quietly dropped and he pleaded not guilty to two other counts — conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing material support to terrorists.

Padilla was detained for three years without charges — or a lawyer — as a so-called enemy combatant. He then was bumped to the civilian justice system in what legal reporter Dahlia Lithwick calls the administration’s “bounce-around strategy” when it became obvious that the courts to which Padilla’s lawyers were appealing were looking unfavorably on his harsh treatment and the Supreme Court was about to step in.

(more

[ProSense]

5. Glenn Greenwald

at Salon:

<...>

All along, the Bush administration could have, should have, and was constitutionally obligated to charge Padilla with crimes if it wanted to imprison him. There is no more defining American liberty than the right to be free of arbitrary executive imprisonment, and like so many other basic liberties, the Bush administration violated and assaulted this right for no reason whatsoever.

That Padilla was finally tried in a court of law is hardly a cause of celebration. After all, the only reason why, after almost four years, the administration finally charged Padilla with crimes was because it wanted to avoid a looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether the President has the right to imprison U.S. citizens without charges.

By finally indicting him, the administration was able to argue, successfully, that the Court should refuse to rule on that question on the ground that the claims were now "moot" by virtue of the indictment. As a result, a ruling by a very right-wing appellate panel in the Fourth Circuit, which held that the President does have these imprisonment powers, still remains valid law, and the administration still claims the right to imprison U.S. citizens with no charges.

When it indicted Padilla, it did so on extremely vague conspiracy charges having nothing to do with the original flamboyant accusations made against him by Ashcroft. Padilla was thus convicted today of conspiring to commit terrorism overseas, not even in the U.S. (the administration's refusal to charge Padilla with any crimes relating to the original accusations is grounded, at least in part, in the fact that its evidence for those original charges was procured by the torture of the others).

Worse still, the notion that Padilla received a "fair trial" is dubious, to put it mildly, and will undoubtedly be vigorously contested on appeal. Last year, the New York Times obtained a copy of a video from Padilla's imprisonment which showed techniques that can only be described as torture -- systematic sensory depravation and gratuitous humiliations which clearly broke Padilla as a human being in every sense that matters, all before he had been charged, let alone convicted, of anything. Whether a person has been subjected to atorture regimen of that severity can possibly receive a "fair trial," in light of his obvious inability to participate meaningfully in his own defense, looms darkly over this entire proceeding.

For many people, including myself, the Padilla case was really the ultimate wake-up call to the true character, the actual soul, of the Bush administration. Imprisoning a U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil, with no charges of any kind, and then keeping him for years completely incommunicado, is just one of those lines which many people believed would never be crossed in America. That it was crossed, so explicitly and with so little controversy, was an unmistakable sign of just how much of our national character was being eroded, just how limitless was the attack on our basic constitutional framework, just how profoundly our political press was failing. Today's verdict offers yet more evidence of just how unnecessary -- on top of illegal, unconstitutional and destructive -- the administration's behavior here was.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I hope the lawyers appeal

as is this is a defeat for the fascists, to a point... he got his day in court

But it also tells me that they could do this to anybody, and I mean anybody no problem

[ProSense]

8. Did the rush on the FISA vote have anything to do with the Padilla case? n/t

[Disturbed]

9. If the judge in this trial is half decent he would

release Padilla with time served. Hasn't he been punished enough for his alleged visit to an al Q training camp?

[ProSense]

10. Padilla Round-Up

Padilla Round-Up

By: John Cole August 16, 2007 at 4:58 pm

Alright- I have had some time to read all the reactions (well, many of them) to the Padilla verdict, and they range from the benign to the chest-thumping on the right (bonus wingnuttery- watch Hot Air try to tie Padilla in to the Oklahoma City bombing. And no, I am not making that up), and from sanguine to thoroughly outraged on the left.

I guess where I stand is as follows- I still do not understand why it was necessary to keep this guy in solitary confinement until he was basically a grunting vegetable. I just don’t. Why was it necessary to violate his rights as a citizen? Why keep him from a lawyer? Why?

It couldn’t have impacted our current operations in Afghanistan or Iraq or elsewhere- this guy was convicted for attempting to do undetermined bad things in Chechnya. I haven’t seen any allegations he was a terrorist mastermind or anything like that- not to pick on Taco Bell employees, but I doubt it is their planning genius that has them spending their days taking orders and handing out salsa packets. And hell, if he is that big of a threat, now that we have him convicted, let’s try him on the real charges- the dirty bomb, the apartment bombing schemes. You know- the reason we grabbed him in the first place.

So, why?

The only thing I can think of is that after they realized there was no real plot to dirty bomb, or blow up apartments, the only thing they could do to save face was to lock him up forever- which I think they would have tried to do, had the SCOTUS not rumbled.

At any rate- convictions of criminals and terrorists are supposed to inspire confidence in our system of justice and our government. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am not inspired by anything that has happened in this case. Quite the opposite. I am profoundly uncomfortable with the notion that our government can grab anyone they want (Oh- but they won’t- if you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have to worry!), say whatever they want about them in the press, do whatever they want with them for years on end, and then try them for completely different things. Al Qaeda would have to come a long way and take some serious effort to hurt me- the FBI has an office a few miles from me and the feds apparently now have a license to do whatever the hell they want with someone, so long as they think he is a bad guy. Understand? For obvious reasons, that should bother every American.

Don’t get me wrong- if Padilla is in fact a threat, I want him locked up, too. You can throw him next to the Unabomber and John Walker Lindh and Eric Rudolph and other traitors, if in fact he is a terrorist. I just think the way this all went down, all of us were deprived of ever knowing if he really was a threat.

That bothers me, and it doesn’t inspire confidence in the way our government works.

[ProSense]

11. NYT: The Padilla Conviction

Editorial

The Padilla Conviction

Published: August 17, 2007

It is hard to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber. But it would be a mistake to see it as a vindication for the Bush administration’s serial abuse of the American legal system in the name of fighting terrorism.

On the way to this verdict, the government repeatedly trampled on the Constitution, and its prosecution of Mr. Padilla was so cynical and inept that the crime he was convicted of — conspiracy to commit terrorism overseas — bears no relation to the ambitious plot to wreak mass destruction inside the United States, which the Justice Department first loudly proclaimed. Even with the guilty verdict, this conviction remains a shining example of how not to prosecute terrorism cases.

When Mr. Padilla was arrested in 2002, the government said he was an Al Qaeda operative who had plotted to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb inside the United States. Mr. Padilla, who is an American citizen, should have been charged as a criminal and put on trial in a civilian court. Instead, President Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and kept him in a Navy brig for more than three years.

The administration’s insistence that it had the right to hold Mr. Padilla indefinitely — simply on the president’s word — was its first outrageous act in the case, but hardly its last. Mr. Padilla was kept in a small isolation cell, and when he left that cell he was blindfolded and his ears were covered. He was denied access to a lawyer even when he was being questioned.

<...>

The administration is already claiming victory, but the result in Mr. Padilla’s case is in many ways a mess. He will likely never be brought to trial on the dirty-bomb plot, a much publicized charge that cries out for resolution. (In another move worthy of Alice in Wonderland, the government is holding another prisoner in Guantánamo, Binyam Mohamed, because he was accused of conspiring with Mr. Padilla in the dirty-bomb plot for which Mr. Padilla was never charged.) There is also the danger that Mr. Padilla’s conviction will be reversed on appeal because of his alleged mistreatment before trial. In hailing the verdict yesterday, a White House spokesman thanked the jury for “upholding a core American principle of impartial justice for all.” It is a remarkable statement, since the administration did everything it could to keep Mr. Padilla away from a jury and deny him impartial justice.

more

[ProSense]

12. Kick! n/t

[HuffleClaw]

13. 'testified that the calls were made in code'

they tried this crap before too, successfully. take a juryroom full of ignorant bigoted citizens and you can convict any brown person of 'terror'.


'code' my ass.

[ProSense]

14. "In a color-coordinated display of their patriotism, the jurors wore red, white and blue clothing"

August 18, 2007

More on the Padilla Verdict

By Mona

As analysis of the trial continues to become more comprehensive, it truly appears that Padilla has many very firm grounds for appeal, including what seem to be clear violations of his constitutional rights. Macswain at Comments from Left Field notes that not only did US District Judge Marcia Cooke, a Bush 43 appointee, refuse to let the jury hear evidence of Padilla’s torture and 3.5 years of detention incommunicado and no legal counsel, she permitted copious admissions of hearsay in which Padilla could not examine the witnesses, and otherwise issued evidentiary rulings that are nearly unheard of in normal trials. My emphasis:

<...>

Padilla’s mother, according to Reuters, observed that the trial took place in Miami, which is a Republican city. I’ve thought Padilla may have lost his case at the point of jury selection, but the pool may not have been the best for fairness and impartiality. This is what I mean:

Jurors, whose names were kept secret, deliberated for about 11 hours after three months of trial in Miami and declined to publicly discuss their verdict….

In a color-coordinated display of their patriotism, the jurors wore red, white and blue clothing to court before breaking for a July 4th recess.

Eleven hours of deliberation after a huge amount of evidence presented during a trial that long is pretty unusual, and then there is that “patriotic” clothing bit. They may think they were serving American values, but let’s see what the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has to say.