Great post from a blog called chicagoboyz.net about the dangers of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian criminal court-
In my previous post, I listed some (but far from all) of the practical problems presented by trying in a civil criminal court an individual (1) who was captured overseas, (2) had evidence against him collected using covert means, with (3) no chain of evidence or custody, and (4) was harshly and physically interrogated with (5) all witnesses and methods being secret.
The greatest danger posed in the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) isn’t that he will go free. The greatest danger is that he will be convicted and that during his appeals the courts will ratify all of the extraordinary measures used to capture and convict him. The great danger is that the courts will ratify the rough, inaccurate and ambiguous norms of martial law as applying to all civil criminal trials.
After a couple of decades of these court decisions reverberating throughout the legal system, we could end up living under de facto martial law.
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Now, Obama wants to bring martial law into a civil court room in Manhattan. In order to let a civil conviction of KSM stand, the higher courts will have to overturn almost all the current constitutional protections of the accused.
