Much has been made of the Obama Administration’s direction to Justice to move the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial out of the Southern District of New York due to the onerous burdens it would impose on lower Manhattan.
As a practical matter, holding the trial in New York posed the specter of a dizzying security lockdown — with roadblocks, checkpoints and rooftop sharpshooters — in the financial district and Chinatown.No one, of course, has spoken out to question whether these burdens are really necessary or appropriate. Obviously, locking down the better part of lower Manhattan, from Chinatown to Wall Street, involves making life a misery, if not an impossibility, for millions of people. Does it really have to be that bad? Perhaps, if you want to be absolutely, totally, completely, 110% certain that no harm will occur. Or maybe there’s no way to be certain, and it’s just a big show. Not being a security analyst, I defer, though I suspect that there’s no way to ever be certain of complete safety.
There’s a secondary aspect to the security measures that hasn’t received a great deal of attention, but should. It’s not merely that the lockdown will affect a huge number of New Yorkers, but that the trial is anticipated to go on for years. Years. If the lockdown was only for a couple of weeks, it’s unlikely that there would much complaining. By and large, New Yorkers are more than willing to suffer some annoyance to bring closure to the attack on the World Trade Center. We suffered the attack and we’ll suffer the trial.
But years?
What possible reason could there be for this trial to take years. KSM has admitted his role. Indeed, he’s bragged about it. Putting aside the “intelligence” garnered from waterboarding and they government still have a case that should be makable with three witnesses in a day or two. Jury selection should take longer than this trial. Years?
One rationale for denying KSM a civilian trial, an open trial using the American system of criminal justice, was that he would turn it into a circus to espouse his political views. Does the United States Attorney’s office plan to do the job for him? If this was meant to be a criminal trial, then it would be limited to the evidence necessary to convict the defendant of the charges against him.
While I’m sure imaginative prosecutors can come up with a few thousand counts against KSM in an indictment that would require two people to carry, they only need one provable capital offense to finish this up. They can’t execute him twice, no less a few thousand times. By growing this trial to epic proportions, they opportunities for KSM to pitch his views become innumerable. To what end?
Would it be unfulfilling to the American public for this trial to be based upon a single terrorism murder count? Would that leave a void about what happened, what the government knows, what the people want to hear? No doubt some will feel this way, but that’s not the point of a criminal trial. It’s not an opportunity to put on the passion play, to serve as a national catharsis.
If the government persists in the notion of making this trial a lifetime endeavor, tying up a courthouse as well as a judge, not even considering the unlikelihood of finding a jury plus about 500 alternates willing to sit for the rest of their natural lives, there is a strong potential of this trial turning into the most monumental disaster in American law ever.
And after the first few months, we’ll get bored with it anyway. We always do.
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I find the assumption that KSM is guilty, rather irksome. The fact that he has supposedly admitted his crimes has two problems. Don’t we have a recent case of someone admitting to a crime he did not commit, in that high profile case involving the little girl who was murdered? The other problem, of course, is that the man was tortured. That puts a pall over admissions of any kind. The purpose of a trial is not just to bring a particular person to justice, but also to publicly air the charges, so that no mafeasance on the part of the government goes undetected. Trials are not only of value to the individual, but to society at large. We guarantee free trials for many reasons, and that is why a civilian trial is being extended to KSM. It is not just for KSM, but for all of us. I hope the trial will be held in downtown New York, and I agree completely with Scott that it should not take a year, and it probably does not need the kind of security that officials say it does. But these days everything is blown out of proportion for political purposes, or for propaganda used to effect public policy of one sort or another. I doubt KSM had much to do with 9-11. Let the government prove it.
Not a year. YearS. Plural. Some have talked about 3-5 years. Years.
Maybe as a security measure they’re planning to only take testimony on ten unannounced and random days of each year for the next ten years or so. That way, the terrorists won’t know be able to figure out a good day for an attack.