As reported by the crap dailies. This trial was a fucking farce!
"Padilla Is Guilty on All Charges in Terror Trial" by ABBY GOODNOUGH and SCOTT SHANE
MIAMI, Aug. 16 — In a significant victory for the Bush administration, a federal jury found Jose Padilla guilty of terrorism conspiracy charges on Thursday after little more than a day of deliberation. Mr. Padilla... now faces life in prison.
The government’s chief evidence was a faded application form that prosecutors said Mr. Padilla, 36, filled out to attend a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2000.
The jurors, seven men and five women from Miami-Dade County, would not speak publicly at the courthouse and left through a side entrance. But one juror, who asked that her name not be used, said later in a telephone interview that she had all but made up her mind before deliberations began.
The juror said in Spanish:
“We had to be sure. We wanted to make sure we went through all the evidence. But the evidence was strong, and we all agreed on that.”
Mr. Padilla’s extraordinary legal journey began in May 2002, when he was arrested at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.... Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Mr. Padilla’s capture a month later... to say that an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.”
After being held in isolation in a military brig in South Carolina for three and a half years.... His lawyers tried in vain to have him found incompetent to stand trial, saying he had been tortured in the brig. The government denied that he was ever mistreated.
Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House:
“We commend the jury for its work in this trial and thank it for upholding a core American principle of impartial justice for all. Jose Padilla received a fair trial and a just verdict.”
The dirty bomb accusations were not mentioned during Mr. Padilla’s three-month trial here, nor was his military confinement.
Though the trial included dozens of witnesses and transcripts of wiretapped phone calls... and jurors had been given a sheaf of complicated instructions for reaching a verdict, they came to a decision around noon on Thursday, their second day of deliberating.
James Cohen, a law professor at Fordham University, said the fact that the Qaeda training camp form had six of Mr. Padilla’s fingerprints was “overwhelmingly powerful” and had very likely swayed the jurors. Mr. Padilla’s lawyers had argued that he might have merely handled the form during his confinement.
[Yeah, fingerprints were only found on the front and back page.
But he filled it out!
Just like you wouldn't leave fingerprints on the inside of a job application.
Update: On DemocracyNow, his lawyer said the writing and dating were DIFFERENT, too!!]
The government recorded thousands of calls in which Mr. Hassoun and Mr. Jayyousi sometimes discussed “playing football” or “eating cheese” — code, prosecutors said, for assisting in violent jihad.... Padilla’s voice was heard in only seven calls, and he was not accused of using code.
Prosecutors also played parts of a 1997 television interview with Osama bin Laden for the jury, in which he called for violent jihad against the United States.... there is no evidence that Mr. Padilla saw or discussed the interview, Judge Cooke instructed jurors not to consider it evidence against him.
[So why did you let them show it, Judge? Pffffttt!
AmeriKa's Justice systewm is shit!!
And the New York Times editorial staff? Pfffftttt!
After condemning Bush and his unconstitutional, law-breaking power grabs, they have the nerve to put up this:
"The Padilla Conviction... It is hard to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber. But it would be a mistake to see it as a vindication for the Bush administration’s serial abuse of the American legal system in the name of fighting terrorism.
[Yup, can't argue with a crap verdict. Sigh!]
On the way to this verdict, the government repeatedly trampled on the Constitution, and its prosecution of Mr. Padilla was so cynical and inept that the crime he was convicted of — conspiracy to commit terrorism overseas — bears no relation to the ambitious plot to wreak mass destruction inside the United States, which the Justice Department first loudly proclaimed. Even with the guilty verdict, this conviction remains a shining example of how not to prosecute terrorism cases.
[But you are o.k. with it, anyway. What a bunch of shitters!]
When Mr. Padilla was arrested in 2002, the government said he was an Al Qaeda operative who had plotted to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb inside the United States. Mr. Padilla, who is an American citizen, should have been charged as a criminal and put on trial in a civilian court. Instead, President Bush declared him an “enemy combatant” and kept him in a Navy brig for more than three years.
The administration’s insistence that it had the right to hold Mr. Padilla indefinitely — simply on the president’s word — was its first outrageous act in the case, but hardly its last. Mr. Padilla was kept in a small isolation cell, and when he left that cell he was blindfolded and his ears were covered. He was denied access to a lawyer even when he was being questioned.
[But the verdict was correct. Times knows all this shit that would call for a DISMISSAL of the case, yet the verdict was correct.
The Times fucking stinks!
I am so sick of this Zionist-controlled shit rag! What a piece of shit!]
The administration also insisted that the courts had no right to second-guess its actions. It was only after the Supreme Court appeared poised last year to use Mr. Padilla’s case to decide whether indefinite detention of an American citizen violates the Constitution, that the White House suddenly decided to give him a civilian trial. It was obvious that the administration was trying to game the legal system and insulate itself from Supreme Court review. J. Michael Luttig, a federal appeals court judge who heard Mr. Padilla’s case, warned about the consequences “for the government’s credibility before the courts in litigation.”
[Aaah, you can convict even if it is a SHIT GOVERNMENT and a SHAM CASE!
This country is fucking finished, folks!]
The administration is already claiming victory, but the result in Mr. Padilla’s case is in many ways a mess. He will likely never be brought to trial on the dirty-bomb plot, a much publicized charge that cries out for resolution.
[Pffft! It was a LIE, fuckers!]
(In another move worthy of Alice in Wonderland, the government is holding another prisoner in Guantánamo, Binyam Mohamed, because he was accused of conspiring with Mr. Padilla in the dirty-bomb plot for which Mr. Padilla was never charged.)
There is also the danger that Mr. Padilla’s conviction will be reversed on appeal because of his alleged mistreatment before trial.
[Yeah, that's a DANGER the Times says!
His innocence is a DANGER, did you get that?]
In hailing the verdict yesterday, a White House spokesman thanked the jury for “upholding a core American principle of impartial justice for all.” It is a remarkable statement, since the administration did everything it could to keep Mr. Padilla away from a jury and deny him impartial justice.
[And, Times? And? ??]
After all that, there was still some good news yesterday: a would-be terrorist will be going to jail. And the Bush administration was forced, grudgingly and only at the very end, to provide him with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution."
[Yup, all the illegalities and torture, but the result was STILL A GOOD THING!
This fucking shit rag paper is hopeless!
You assholes sure Padilla was a would-be terrorists, or you just sucking up government shit again?
Well, you might as well forget this society.
That's why the papers have been so shitty lately.
They know that Martial Law is coming.
That's why they are HIDING the WARS we are LOSING and giving us no information on the UPCOMING ATTACK on Iran.
Let's get a third-party view for the true analysis, shall we?]
"Conviction of Padilla is Bad News for All Americans--Including Journalists" by Dave Lindorff Thursday, August 16, 2007
With habeas corpus a thing of the past, with arrest and detention without charge permitted, with torture and spying without court oversight all the rage, with prosecutors free to tape conversations between lawyers and their clients, and with the judicial branch now infested by rightwing judges who would have been at home in courtrooms of the Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany, for all they seem to care about common law tradition, the only real thing holding the line against absolute tyranny in the U.S. has been the jury.
Now, with Jose Padilla--a US citizen who was originally picked up and held incommunicado on a military base for three and a half years, publicly accused (though never charged) with planning to construct and detonate a so-called “dirty” nuclear device (this a guy without a high school education!), all based upon hearsay, evidence elicited by torture, and a few overheard wiretapped conversations where prosecutors claimed words like “zucchini” were code for explosive devices—convicted on a charge of “planning to murder,” we see that juries in this era of a bogus “war on terror” are ready to believe anything.
That last line of defense—the common sense or ordinary citizens in a jury box—is gone too.
The jury in this case apparently accepted the government’s contention that Padilla was a member of Al Qaeda, and had returned from a trip to Pakistan full of plans to wreak mayhem on his own country. They cared not a whit for the fact that the government had used methods against Padilla (three years of isolation and total sensory deprivation that had driven him insane) which would have made medieval torturers green with envy. They cared not a whit that there was no real evidence against Padilla.
This was, in the end, a case that most closely resembled the famous Saturday Night Live skit in which witches were dunked underwater to “prove” whether they were in fact witches, and where if they drowned, they were found to be innocent. In the end, Padilla’s jury simply bought the government’s wild and wild-eyed story. They decided he hadn’t drowned, so he must be guilty.
Padilla can now expect to spend what’s left of his life in prison. Since the government has already driven him insane, he will have the added burden of being mentally unbalanced from the outset of his incarceration. His survival prospects are not good.
The president promptly thanked the jury for their “good judgment.”
We can no doubt expect many more Padillas now that the way has been paved for this kind of totalitarian approach to law enforcement.
Beginning today, we can expect the government to begin arresting people on an array of trumped-up charges, locking them away in black sites, on military bases, or maybe even overseas, subjecting them to all manner of torture, and then finally bringing them to trial on trumped-up charges. We can also expect juries, made fearful by breathless warnings that “evil ones” mean us and our nation harm, to buy the government’s stories.
Who is at risk? That’s hard to say, but it’s clear that it won’t just be hardened terrorist types. A presidential executive order signed by Bush on July 17 declares that anything “undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction (sic) and political reform (sic) in Iraq” could be deemed a crime making the perpetrator subject to arrest. Would writing essays critical of the president, the war in Iraq, or the “reconstruction” effort in Iraq meet that standard? Who knows? Would being interviewed for commentary as part of a news story on English-language Al Jezeera TV (which Bush and Cheney have declared to be supportive of the Iraqi insurgency, and which Bush reportedly at one point considered bombing!)? And how about anti-war protesters? We already have Washington, DC, under pressure from Homeland Security, threatening the organization World Can’t Wait with multiple $10,000 fines for posting flyers around the city announcing an anti-war march and rally on September 15. If they go ahead with the protest, will they be joining Padilla?
I have little doubt that this administration would love to lock up journalistic critics and protesters in military brigs, so the question is: how would juries respond to charges that American journalists and protesters against the war were treacherously undermining the Bush war effort?
I used to be confident that most juries would laugh such cases out of court. After the Padilla decision, I’m not so sure.
You want to think that your fellow citizens have at least some measure of common sense, but this case suggests otherwise--that they are easily frightened, gullible, and willing to believe the most fantastic claims of the government.
The future does not look good for freedom in America."
[It's over!
Because the fucking stinkhole, dumbfuck Amurkns are FUCKING STOO-PID!!
So sick of STOO-PID FUCKING AMURKNS!!!!!!!!]
