Obama's Gitmo Policy Coming Home To Roost

[leftysergeant]

There you go, using the deaths that Ghailani was specifically acquitted of causing to justify a higher sentence. You don't see the illogic in that?

Rummy and the merry morons screwed up the evidence against him so that the murder case fell apart. The lesser charge was probably all that they had untainted evidence for. They convicted him of involvement in the incident based on that. But that is not enough to hang him for.

Had we had a POTUS with the IQ of a house plant when he was arrested, he would probably be stretching a rope by now.

 

[gumboot]

I can understand the decision not to allow evidence gathered under torture. That's only right and proper, and as it should be. But the decision not to allow a witness who was tracked down via information provided by torture seems bizarre to me. What does it matter how authorities find a witness? The witness has valid, untarnished evidence about the TRUTH of what happened. That's what a court case is actually about, isn't it? Finding out the truth of what happened?

I don't condone torture, and I don't think testimony gained under torture is valid evidence for anything, and frankly I think those who made the decision to use torture should be prosecuted, but it seems this is a case of liberalism gone so far it's lost the plot a little.

As long as the wintness's testimony isn't coerced, it should be valid.


ETA. Also, no doubt someone else has already pointed this out, but a more valid title for this thread would be "Bush's Torture Policy Coming Home to Roost".

 

[A'isha]

I can understand the decision not to allow evidence gathered under torture. That's only right and proper, and as it should be. But the decision not to allow a witness who was tracked down via information provided by torture seems bizarre to me. What does it matter how authorities find a witness? The witness has valid, untarnished evidence about the TRUTH of what happened. That's what a court case is actually about, isn't it? Finding out the truth of what happened?

I don't condone torture, and I don't think testimony gained under torture is valid evidence for anything, and frankly I think those who made the decision to use torture should be prosecuted, but it seems this is a case of liberalism gone so far it's lost the plot a little.

As long as the wintness's testimony isn't coerced, it should be valid.

It's the inevitable result of the long-standing principle of US jurisprudence known as the fruit of the poisonous tree.

In short, if a piece of evidence could only have been obtained via an illegal action, then that evidence is considered inadmissible, even if it's otherwise completely valid.

EDIT: Hmm...the wiki article though seems to indicate that witnesses are not covered by this doctrine. I'll have to check with a lawyer friend of mine tomorrow to see what the standards for that usually are.

 

[gumboot]

It's the inevitable result of the long-standing principle of US jurisprudence known as the fruit of the poisonous tree.

In short, if a piece of evidence could only have been obtained via an illegal action, then that evidence is considered inadmissible, even if it's otherwise completely valid.

EDIT: Hmm...the wiki article though seems to indicate that witnesses are not covered by this doctrine. I'll have to check with a lawyer friend of mine tomorrow to see what the standards for that usually are.

Yeah the line in the wikipedia article

The discovery of a witness is not evidence in itself because the witness is attenuated by separate interviews, in-court testimony and his or her own statements.

Reflects my point of view. A further dig finds Wong Sun vs United States which seems to address my question satisfactorily.

Wong Sun's lawyer argued that Wong Sun's confession should also be excluded as fruit of the poisonous tree. The court affirmed the fruit of the poisonous tree rule, but found an exception to exclusion in Wong Sun's case on the grounds that Wong Sun had voluntarily returned to the police station to make his statement, an act which "attenuated the taint" or broke the chain of inadmissible evidence. Wong Sun was granted a new trial, but his confession was admissible.

It would seem, from first blush at least, that Adebe's testimony was only a result of arrest and interrogation, and even then might be questionable, so I can see why the Judge would overrule that. It seems the US Supreme Court's position on the use of witnesses accessed through tainted evidence is fairly in line with mine.