All men are created equal

Today I sent the following letter via email to Senators Lindsey Graham of S. Carolina, John Warner of Virginia and John McCain of Arizona thanking them for their efforts to ensure that the military commisions being set up in Cuba will be fair and just and allow the accused all basic due process rights. I hope their efforts and the efforts of the tope Judge Advocates for each of the four branches will be rewarded with a just system for any possible trials.

Senator,

I wanted to thank you for your support of due process and basic rights for all people, even terrorists. As a lawyer and a Soldier I believe it is very important that those we try in Cuba be given every right which any American would expect. Our rights derive not from being Americans, but from our "Creator". Our country was founded on the principle that The Constitution merely is the best means we as a nation have for protecting those rights, it did not itself give us these rights.

My point in this is best expressed by a much greater lawyer than I could ever hope to be. In 1855 Abraham Lincoln wrote his friend Joshua Speed regarding his views on slavery and other issues. In so doing he discussed the Know Nothing party and said as to their increasing popularity: "Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that, ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes tot his I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretences of loving liberty – to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.”

As a military defense counsel I have represented a client in a case that included classified information. In that case my client, who did not have a clearance, was given a temporary one so that he could have the same access to all information and all parts of the trial as the rest of the court, to include the panel, the judge and the lawyers. In that case a potential witness’s identity was itself classified. Had this been necessary to disclose, it would have been. The government didn’t need him, and neither did we, so it was not an issue. But it never was given to the panel and hidden from my client.

Those set for trial before military commissions can and should be given the same rights that Soldier received. If, as Congressman Hunter suggested, the only evidence would require reveling a classified source, it cannot be that great of a case to begin with! Further, what if the suspect could point to a bias in that witness that would cause doubt as to the credibility of the evidence? Without the suspect knowing the evidence, there is no reasonable way for the lawyers to effectively represent him. Further, how can we possible allow a conviction to stand based on “confession” obtained through coercion/torture. We are Americans and we of all Nations should not be playing semantics with definitions of torture! In doing so we evoke the dead spirit of the USSR or Kafka’s “Trial” and Orwell’s “1984” more than the Spirit of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt and Reagan.

I have no respect or love or admiration for the terrorists who rendered their horror upon us five years ago and who continue to fight us. But I love my country deeply and I believe that we lose a part of ourselves and our foundations in those “unalienable rights” derived from our Creator if we subvert those rights in others. By giving all suspects the same basic rights we subvert their purpose and prove ourselves superior.

Thank you for your fight on behalf of the Rule of Law and natural rights.