Today the Justice Department announced that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be tried in civilian court for his alleged acts of terror at last week's marathon that left three dead (four if you count the police officer he and his brother murdered a few days later) and almost 200 injured. This has angered some on the right who wanted him to be charged as an enemy combatant terrorist. This should not be an issue. Sadly, in 2013, some elected officials who have taken oaths to protect and serve have a problem with an American citizen being treated like an American citizen.
He's a US citizen, protected by the Constitution. End of story. He
wasn't a combatant in the theater of war, he is accused of committing a
single violent act of terrorism on the streets of Boston (again, excluding the shootout with police as the brothers tried to make their escape). There are many rights in the US Constitution, including the right to a jury trial in front of your peers. While we may decide what actions or crimes are worthy of a jury trial or just trial by a judge, we don not have the right to strip American citizens of their rights because we don't like what they have done. We are America. We don't stick up for the principles the terrorists
supposedly hate by abandoning them the millisecond our own personal
safety is threatened.
We
start down the slippery slope of deciding citizens are not protected by
the rule of law because the are accused of doing something especially
heinous we open Pandora's box. When we start calling citizens "enemy
combatants" we start to give up everything that the Bill of Rights were
written for. It may seem harmless now, only using a reduced justice
system, outside our legal system, where the right to defend yourself is minimized, on enemy combatants or terrorists as we know them now, but it is
not hard to see some future administration come in with different or varied
criteria as to what is a terrorist act and possibly strip anyone
who does not agree with the government of their due process rights.
Terrorists need to be treated as the common criminals that they are. Don't elevate them to some special kind of special super special enemy warrior status. "Terror networks" aren't that much different that the criminal enterprises that are and prosecuted under RICO (except perhaps for more civilian deaths). If the civil justice system is good enough for the mafia, it is good enough for Tsarnaev.
As to the questioning without Miranda for intelligence, all it means, at worse, is that prosecutors may be prevented from using whatever he may tell them against him when his trial starts (fruit of the poisonous tree). There already is plenty of other evidence to lock him up for three lifetimes. A fourth lifetime won't make much of a difference.
Terrorists need to be treated as the common criminals that they are. Don't elevate them to some special kind of special super special enemy warrior status. "Terror networks" aren't that much different that the criminal enterprises that are and prosecuted under RICO (except perhaps for more civilian deaths). If the civil justice system is good enough for the mafia, it is good enough for Tsarnaev.
As to the questioning without Miranda for intelligence, all it means, at worse, is that prosecutors may be prevented from using whatever he may tell them against him when his trial starts (fruit of the poisonous tree). There already is plenty of other evidence to lock him up for three lifetimes. A fourth lifetime won't make much of a difference.
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