Politics

Star chamber trials, now with U.S. branding

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• Thursday 7th August 2008

Hamdan has been found guilty in a military trial at Guantanamo. His defenders couldn’t question certain witnesses, hear certain testimony, see certain evidence, or ban confessions obtained during, after, or under the threat of, torture.

As Scott Horton wrote in Harper’s:

When the Founding Fathers looked for a model that reflected the abuses they objected to-in short what they intended to forbid by their new Constitution and Bill of Rights-they turned to an English institution, the Court of Star Chamber. It was a state security court with ancient roots which flourished under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. The Star Chamber court operated in secrecy, was not bothered by the picky evidentiary rules that emerged in other courts, and did not believe that those appearing before it on state security charges had many rights-certainly not the right to counsel, nor even the right to conduct a defense. It relied very heavily on torture to extract the evidence it sought to convict, usually a confession-though rarely, of course, a confession with any validity, since the application of the rack would quickly get the subject to say whatever was desired, truthful or not.

The NY Times added in an editorial today:

Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in Guantanamo, put the trial in a disturbing light. He testified that he was informed by his superiors that only guilty verdicts would be tolerated. He also said that he was told to bring high-profile cases quickly to help Republicans score a pre-election public relations coup.

Back in the day, it used to be that the USSR was the country with highly publicized show trials, and only corrupt regimes resorted to kangaroo courts.

Welcome to the Stars & Stripes Chamber.

Phooey.