Lawyer Says Military Tried to Coerce Detainee's Plea

[brooklynite]

WASHINGTON, June 15 - A military defense lawyer told a Senate hearing on Wednesda that when military authorities first asked him to represent a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he was instructed that he could negotiate only a guilty plea.

The lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles D. Swift of the Navy, who represents a Yemeni, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, said that he regarded the effort, in December 2003, "as a clear attempt to coerce to Mr. Hamdan into pleading guilty."

Commander Swift testified that when he visited Mr. Hamdan, he discovered that the prisoner did not want to plead guilty, as the authorities had apparently believed from their earlier interrogation of him, conducted without a lawyer.

...snip...

Commander Swift said, "I was deeply troubled that to ensure that Mr. Hamdan would plead guilty as planned, the chief prosecutor's request came with a critical condition that the defense counsel was for the limited purpose of 'negotiating a guilty plea' to an unspecified offense and that Mr. Hamdan's access to counsel was conditioned on his willingness to negotiate such a plea."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/16/politics/16detain.html?pagewanted=all&oref=login
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Well, I guess if he was really innocent, he wouldn't have been arrested...

[Lerkfish]

1. gulag.

there, I said it.

here's another one:

concentration camp.

here's another one:

the final solution for muslims.


where oh where do we stop on this continuum?

[Frances]

2. What did they need a lawyer for?

They could have tied the man up and thrown him in the water. If he drowned, he was innocent. If he floated, he was guilty. This administration is going back to the middle ages in so many ways, why not this way too?

[bobbieinok]

3. or another medieval option 'trial by combat'

representative of govt and representative of defendant have a joust; if defendant's representative wins, clearly God has supported the righteouness of his cause

[bobbieinok]

4. isn't there another option too 'trial by fire'?

defendant walks across hot coals; if feet burn, s/he is guilty

(have read somewhere that defendants rarely lost these cases, that judges often quietly allowed defendant to take steps in arrangements so that s/he would not be found guilty

[gratuitous]

5. Well, it's easier to get convictions

If "not guilty" isn't one of the options. Don't you people understand, even now, how the Bush administration thinks and works?