Tax Lawyer's Blog

“Semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit.“

- Legal principle -

A lot has been made on the left about the impropriety of trying suspected Al Qaeda terrorists before military tribunals. The reason it is improper, they say, is that these suspected criminals are entitled to due process of law and can only get that in a civilian criminal court. So, Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that the worst of those terrorists, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), will be tried in, of all places, New York City.

But listen to what Mr. Holder told members of the Senate Judiciary committee last Wednesday when asked what would happen if KSM were acquitted:

Failure is not option. I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is. I’m not scared of what Khalid Sheik Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be either.

And his boss, President Obama, the self-proclaimed guardian of the civil rights of the accused, said that people won’t find it so offensive:

. . . when [Kahlid Sheik Mohammed] is convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

Holder is the top lawyer in the land steeped in knowledge of criminal law, the bill of rights and the vagaries of due process. Obama taught constitutional law at Harvard, America’s premier law school.

So how can it be that Messrs. Holder and Obama don’t know that the foundation of all due process is the presumption of the accused’s innocence?

Of course, they do know it. They just don’t care.

From the left side of their mouths they say that KSM is entitled to a fair trial, but from the right side of their mouths they say that his conviction and execution are guaranteed.

Don’t believe all of that high-falutin nonsense they’re peddling about how much they care about KSM’s rights. Holder and Obama, and just about everyone else clamoring for a “fair” trial for this Neanderthal, have publicly stumped for his immediate conviction and quick death.

This is a cynical show trial designed to dupe the world into thinking that KSM – who, were he a Christian terrorist held in a Muslim country, would have already been beheaded – was fairly tried. It will be impossible to seat an impartial jury in this case - especially in New York – and Holder and Obama not only know it, but are counting on it.

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