Right Side of the Rainbow

“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,” the New York Times reports from Miami:hellsing the dawn

Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who became one of the first Americans designated an “enemy combatant” in the anxious months after Sept. 11, 2001, now faces life in prison. He was released last year from a long and highly unusual military confinement to face criminal charges in Federal District Court here.

Padilla and his co-defendants were convicted of conspiracy to murder people in a foreign country, and of providing material support to terrorists. He was arrested in May 2002 for what then-Attorney General John Ashcroft described as an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.” Padilla’s convictions Thursday were unrelated to the “dirty bomb” plot. hellsing the dawn

“This demonstrates, at least for now, that the United States is fully capable of prosecuting terrorism while affording defendants the full procedural protections of the Constitution,” said Michael Greenberger, who served in the Clinton administration Justice Department …

Wrong. This case demonstrates no such thing: hellsing the dawn

… other terrorists may be more clever than Padilla and his co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi; they may not leave a trail that can be followed by a normal criminal investigation — subject to all the normal limitations on the collection of evidence, but which can be tracked by the use of expanded intelligence operations that could not be introduced in federal court, either because they violate some right guaranteed to ordinary criminal defendants or because introducing them as evidence would expose covert sources, methods, and technology.

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In ordinary criminal trials, we accept the fact that a certain percent of guilty defendants will get off ‘on a technicality.’

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But where national-security is concerned, we are much less concerned with punishing the guilty than protecting society from dangerous people. Nor does deterrence factor into the equation when dealing with attackers who expect to die during their crime …

Above all else, the Government must do whatever it can to stop a mass casualty attack. Here, Padilla was arrested to prevent a “dirty bomb” attack, and then transferred to military custody for useful interrogation.hellsing the dawn

His handling by the military means that, among other things, Padilla was not Mirandized or given a lawyer, making it impossible to prosecute him in civilian court on “dirty bomb” charges. But the attacked was foiled. (The Government then sought other grounds for bringing a criminal prosecution.)hellsing the dawn

As John Hinderaker explains, this case highlights “the difference between war-fighting, the administration’s primary approach to terrorism, and criminal prosecution, the Democrats’ predominant if not exclusive method.”hellsing the dawn

In a war-fighting model, you’re trying to get information about terrorist plots before they mature, so you can prevent them from taking place. In a criminal prosecution model, you’re trying to punish terrorists for acts they’ve already committed. In Padilla’s case, the government was able to achieve both ends. But the administration’s priority was correct: first, do what it takes to learn the facts, so that if there are plots that may be carried out imminently, they can be foiled.

At sentencing, Jose Padilla faces life in prison. In bygone days, he would have been shot dead.hellsing the dawn