Hicks trial

[lederhosen]

The judge also decided that Hicks’s civilian lawyer, New York criminal attorney Joshua Dratel could not represent Hicks because he had not signed a form demanded by the court saying he would conform to the regulations governing proceedings.

Mr Dratel protested strongly, saying he could not sign the form because the regulations governing the conduct of attorneys had not yet been formulated by the Secretary of Defence. He was not going to sign a blank cheque for his ethical obligations.

No frickin' wonder Hicks has settled for a plea-bargain. IANAL, but I'd be curious to know what his chances would be of getting that overturned later, by some other court, on grounds of coercion.

Comments

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

I hope hicks gets time served and comes home, it sucks but I really don't see a better option for it.

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

Um, shouldn't the judge have made a fuss about stuff before he potentially deprived someone of their right to representation? Or don't you get those (rights), these days.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much coverage the case has been getting in the USA, but it's an utter disgrace - this is just one more thing from five years of this crap. Hicks is a non-US-citizen, being tried by US military tribunal, so 'rights' appear to be few and far between, and our government has been utterly spineless about lobbying for any sort of reasonable treatment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks

There have also been attacks on Hicks' military lawyer, Michael Mori, for violating the USMCJ; as far as I can tell, the argument is that Hicks' own lawyer isn't allowed to claim his client is being victimised for political ends, because that would count as military interference with the political process.

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

I've been kind of isolated, but I think I would have heard if there'd been much coverage. Considering, I'm not surprised there likely hasn't been. I wasn't around for it, but did we do this in WWII? Aside from the fact that I am still under the impression our congress has never declared war on anybody. But that could just be me.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I wasn't around for it, but did we do this in WWII?

Not quite the same thing, but the internment of Japanese Americans was pretty appalling; many years later it was acknowledged as a mistake and reparations paid to the survivors.

Hicks' status is rather different; he certainly has questions to answer about what he was doing in Afghanistan. But the whole process seems to have been designed to prevent him from getting anything resembling a fair trial; after five years of abuse and frequent solitary confinement, it's not even clear that his mental health is adequate for trial.

Anyway, it looks like he may end up with time served plus about a year in an Australian jail, meaning that he won't be able to talk to the media until just after the next federal election...

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking specifically of the enemy combatant in the field kind of stuff. I mean, we had German POWs working on farms and stuff here in the mainland US, but I really don't follow military history, per se, so I didn't know if we'd had weird courts martial stuff like this. And I'm unsurprised by your note on the election timing.