Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Dangerous Games

Since November the judges have been moving forward towards the Habeas hearings that the Supreme Court said in June must be promptly held. In some cases we need information from the Government to show that our client is innocent. This is referred to as "exculpatory" evidence in legal circles... evidence that tends to undermine the Governments case. Unfortunately, and especially in these kind of cases, that evidence is usually in the hands of the Government. The Government is "required" to be looking for that evidence and voluntarily tendering it. In the Gitmo cases the Government has established a pattern of hiding the exculpatory evidence from Habeas counsel. As this pattern emerges I think we can expect more Judges, like Judge Sullivan, to come down hard on the Government for hiding information that disproves the Government's cases against our clients (click on the title to read about the case before J. Sullivan). Because we cannot trust the government to do the right thing... which they are legally required to do, many of us have had to conduct our own rather unorthodox (but completely legal) investigations. Like the case before Judge Sullivan I too learned very damaging information about a former guantanamo prisoner who made wild and dangerous accusations against one of my clients. Turns out he made similarly dangerous accusations against countless others at Guantanamo. Now that I have received some background information on this accuser (which I cannot discuss) I can now tell you that the Government has sunk to levels lower than even I could imagine. In fact, from what I know about the case before J. Sullivan the exculpatory evidence that the government has withheld in one of my cases (and in several other cases with the same accuser) is much worse. It is bad enough that severely mentally ill prisoners were held without proper treatment at Guantanamo, however, it is even worse that they were exploited and used by the military to provide accusations justifying the continued imprisonment of innocent men at Guantanamo. But worst of all, is the fact that the Government continues with these dangerous games,is still trying to hide this very damning information and continues to shirk its legal duty to provide exculpatory information.
These attorneys, for whatever reason, have decided that it is more important to continue to try to justify the unjustifiable... the continued imprisonment of innocent men, rather than abide by the rule of law. The Department of Justice is in a shambles and as far as I am concerned they should all be fired and be forced to forfeit their law licenses.