[Mb-civic] Another Blown Case? - Washington Post Editorial

[William Swiggard]

Another Blown Case?

Washington Post Editorial
Monday, March 20, 2006; A14

THE DEATH penalty case against accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacharias 
Moussaoui has barely survived the government's latest bout of 
incompetence. In a blatant violation of a court order, a Federal 
Aviation Administration lawyer working on the case sent key aviation 
witnesses a transcript of the government's opening statement, along with 
her comments on it. This led U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema to 
exclude those witnesses -- potentially crippling the prosecutors' case 
for execution of the only person to face trial for the attacks on the 
Pentagon and the World Trade Center. On Friday, Judge Brinkema revised 
her order, allowing the testimony of aviation witnesses untainted by the 
misconduct. So the case will now limp forward.

Americans opposed to capital punishment, as we are, have little reason 
to regret this development. Mr. Moussaoui already has pleaded guilty and 
faces life in prison, which is the sentence he should get. While he is 
by his own admission an al-Qaeda operative sent here to do America harm, 
his links to the attacks -- which took place after he was in custody -- 
are weak.

This case nevertheless joins a line of big terrorism prosecutions marred 
by government misconduct, overzealousness, hyping of charges or just 
plain ineffectiveness. A conviction in Detroit had to be set aside 
because of prosecutorial misconduct. The government brought spectacular 
charges against accused Islamic Jihad activist Sami al-Arian, only to 
see a jury reject many of them -- and convict on none -- after a lengthy 
trial. Then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced the arrest of 
Jose Padilla with great fanfare as the foiling of a plot to detonate a 
radiological "dirty" bomb; after holding him for years as an enemy 
combatant, the government indicted him for far lesser matters. Mohamed 
Qahtani, the Guantanamo Bay inmate the government has labeled the 20th 
hijacker -- when it wasn't busy making the same claim about Mr. 
Moussaoui -- was subjected to such abusive interrogation that he 
probably cannot face trial at all.

More generally, the military still hasn't managed to try a single person 
at Guantanamo before its much-vaunted commissions, whose main selling 
point was their efficiency. More than four years after the Sept. 11 
attacks, the United States lacks a stable, predictable system for trying 
accused terrorists.

Prosecuting terrorists isn't easy, as Mr. Moussaoui's trial has 
repeatedly illustrated, but much of this is the Bush administration's 
fault. The administration failed to work with Congress to create viable 
legal structures to handle these cases, proceeding in whatever way 
seemed most convenient in any given situation. The results are abysmal. 
And, ironically, they undermine the case for the more secretive military 
trial procedures the government is trying to create. If authorities fail 
so often to play by the rules in the relatively open federal court 
system, it's hard to believe their behavior will be better when the 
spotlight is turned off.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/19/AR2006031900763.html
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