LOOSE LIPS FROM OBAMA/GIBBS AND CRIMINAL RIGHTS
Updated: Mon., Feb. 8, 2010,
Team O’s civil-liberties woes
If Team Obama is so keen on trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists in civilian court, it needs to remember that criminals have rights.
Such as the right not to have the verdict and sentence publicly proclaimed before trial by the nation’s top officials.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declared last week that 9/11 kingpin KSM “is going to meet justice, and he’s going to meet his maker and he’s likely to be executed for the heinous crimes that he committed.”
And President Obama himself said something similar last November, declaring of KSM: “I don’t think that it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and the death sentence is applied to him.”
Now, obviously KSM is guilty, and richly deserves to die.
Indeed, he and his comrades offered to plead guilty before military tribunals — and to accept the death penalty.
But now that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have decided, in order to prove that America really is committed to civil liberties, to try these killers in civilian court, they need to . . . well, respect civil liberties.
Loose talk like that from Gibbs and Obama is a hanging curveball for defense lawyers determined to exploit every single one of KSM & Co.’s new constitutional rights.
And what about the judge who might decide that KSM & Co. can’t get a fair trial, thanks to the loose talk of the president and his spokesmen?
We don’t doubt for a moment that the case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed et al. is overwhelming — and that convictions should be a matter of routine.
All the more reason why the prosecutions shouldn’t be compromised by irresponsible public pronouncements.
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