Terror Judge Worries Legal Experts

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge left his Detroit courtroom, traveled to CIA headquarters and joined the Justice Department in personally interviewing a witness whose testimony became key to the judge's decision to reverse convictions in the biggest terrorism trial since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Government officials familiar with the interview told The Associated Press that the judge and Justice officials worked together outside the presence of defense lawyers because of concerns about protecting secret information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

But legal experts said regardless of those concerns U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen's actions were highly unusual and could provide grounds for lawyers to challenge his impartiality because he assumed the role of investigator in a case he continued to preside over.

"Based on those facts, is it proper? The answer is no," said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University who has followed closely the unraveling of the Detroit terror case. "A judge is not supposed to engage in investigation off the (official court) record and with people who are aligned with one of the parties."

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-terror-trial,0,4326969.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[teryang]

1. The biggest terrorism trial since 911?

Er, who is/are the defendant(s)?

[Supersedeas]

2. the govt attorneys have an obligation to notify opposing counsel

of ex parte communications with the judge.

A$$craft justice is a different kind of justice.

[DulceDecorum]

3. Where's the beef?

The three men who are on trial are NOT US citizens.
Once that is the case,
they have NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER under the US immigration law.
Sure, they think they do.
Sure, their embassies also think they do.
Sure the Constitution of the United States of America
says POINT BLANK that they do.
But no,
they don't --
because Congress and the Justice Department says so.

In INS courtrooms,
the judge VERY FREQUENTLY doubles as prosecutor
and if an alien claims any constitutional protection,
immigration law gives an instant and mandatory verdict of
GUILTY AS CHARGED.

And if you think that I am in any way mistaken,
check this ONE SINGLE article out.

Prosecutor as judge and jury
The power of the courts to review immigration orders and to enforce the rule of law against the Immigration and Naturalization Service has never been more under attack. The immigration laws were exhaustively amended in 1996 - first by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and then by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Since then, immigrants' right to judicial review has been the subject of extensive litigation in the federal appellate courts. So far the Supreme Court has declined to intervene.
In countless immigration cases around the country, the Justice Department is invoking IIRIRA to argue that, for many immigrants, Congress repealed the judiciary's historic authority - dating from Justice John Marshall's seminal decision in Marbury v. Madison - to "say what the law is." In the government's view, IIRIRA virtually eliminated judicial oversight of the INS and conferred on the attorney general the power to decide - unilaterally - how to interpret and enforce the immigration laws.
According to the Justice Department then, the very branch of government charged with enforcing the law is now the branch that also, in a sense, adjudicates it. The elimination of checks and balances is obvious: No one wants the very police officer that arrests him, or the very prosecutor who brings claims against him, also sitting as the judge in his case.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/09/columns/fl.guttentag.immigration.09.19/

Therefore, Ashcroft,
as Attorney General,
gets to decide,
on a whim,
who lives and who dies
and any judge that rules different is completely out of line.
So, like I said earlier,
WHERE'S THE BEEF?