July 23, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Their Own Private Guantánamo
By CHISUN LEE, NY TIMES

AS the Obama administration and Congress try to forge a legal framework for detaining suspected terrorists, they might want to take a close look at what’s happening at the federal district courthouse just a short walk down Pennsylvania Avenue from both the White House and the Capitol.

Trial judges there have quietly decided 31 of some 200 cases brought by Guantánamo inmates seeking freedom. Dossier by dossier, the jurists have answered the core questions that policy experts have been addressing in theory: When can the president place someone in preventive detention, and how solid does the evidence need to be?

President Obama, like George W. Bush before him, has claimed the power to detain not only Qaeda and Taliban members, but also those who “support” them. Last year the Supreme Court ruled that the courts can scrutinize these detention decisions and overturn them if they are invalid. But the court didn’t say exactly what a valid detention looks like, and Congress hasn’t stepped in to make it clear.

Thus the federal judges in Washington have had to develop their own guidelines — functioning, in essence, as the country’s national security court.

A close examination of the decisions shows that some of the fears about sending terrorism cases to civilian courts have not been realized. The judges haven’t been particularly hard on the government, holding it to a low standard of proof: If more than half the evidence tips in the government’s favor, then the detainee stays put — a far lower bar than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The judges have also admitted hearsay evidence, and they’ve sealed courtrooms to protect government secrecy.

Yet despite these allowances, the government has not fared well. Twenty-six detainees have won their lawsuits, known as habeas petitions, while five have lost. So far, the Obama administration has filed just one appeal.

These initial judgments may not be typical, because they involved relatively low-level suspects. But they offer the first tangible indication of what members of the third branch of government believe it takes to make preventive detention legal.

While the federal trial judges are working largely without guidance, the Supreme Court did offer some clues in its decision on a 2004 challenge by Yaser Hamdi, an American accused by the Bush administration of fighting the United States in Afghanistan. The justices said the situation in which he was captured was enough like a classic battlefield that detention without charge was justified until the end of hostilities, as is typical in wartime.

But the fight against terrorism won’t have a “clear terminal point,” as President Obama said recently, and many of the detainees weren’t captured on an obvious battlefield. The president says he can detain not only anyone who contributed to the 9/11 attacks, but also people “who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or Al Qaeda forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” The habeas suits have opened this claim to dispute. Some judges have pushed back at President Obama’s assertion of power, particularly when assessing the concept of “supporting” the enemy.

In the case of Ghaleb Nassar al-Bihani, a Yemeni being held at Guantánamo Bay, Judge Richard Leon agreed with the government that simply cooking meals for the Taliban was “more than sufficient ‘support’ ” of the enemy to justify his detention. Yet Judge Gladys Kessler ordered another Yemeni, Ali bin Ali Ahmed, freed despite the government’s claim that he’d stayed at a suspect guesthouse and “traveled ... in the company of terrorist fighters fleeing the battlefield.”

Another judge, Reggie Walton, who is handling the challenges of more than a dozen men, defined “substantial support” as membership in “the ‘armed forces’ of an enemy organization.” Judge John Bates scrapped the “substantial support” concept altogether, which he said comes from the world of criminal law.

Perhaps the sharpest curb on presidential authority came from Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who ruled in March that even if a Taliban fighter named Yasim Muhammed Basardah had deserved detention when captured, he now deserved freedom because he had informed on other detainees and “any ties with the enemy have been severed.”

The judges have been more accommodating of the government on technical matters, including the protection of national security secrets. All have routinely concealed important facts — sometimes even the very basis for deciding to keep someone locked up — despite the principle that American courts should be open.

That’s what happened in the case of Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni whose lawyer insisted he had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in its civil war, not against the United States, and was “easy prey for locals who were eager to hand over anyone they could find in return for American rewards.” Judge Leon rejected the argument, saying there was “more than ample evidence” of Mr. Alwi’s affiliation with America’s enemies, but that evidence isn’t revealed in the unclassified version of the judge’s decision released to the public.

In the case of six Algerian men arrested in Bosnia, Judge Leon ruled in favor of five because the evidence that they had planned to travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against the United States was unreliable. But the judge decided against the sixth man because of other “credible and reliable” evidence that he kept secret.

The judges have also overlooked technical imperfections in the government’s evidence, admitting anonymous and other unverifiable information. One government lawyer explained that military and intelligence officers aren’t accustomed to following the “finer points” of evidence rules, and the court doesn’t appear to expect them to be: in no case has a judge decided against the government merely because its evidence lacked proper form, as far as the publicly available records show.

The judges were more demanding when it came to interpreting the substance of the government’s evidence. In the case of Mr. Ahmed, Judge Kessler agreed to consider hearsay “because of the exigencies of the circumstances.” But she eventually ruled that he should be released because the accuracy of the evidence was “hotly contested for a host of different reasons ranging from the fact that it contains second- and third-hand hearsay to allegations that it was obtained by torture to the fact that no statement purports to be a verbatim account of what was said.”

The trial judges have also rejected much of the intelligence community’s “mosaic theory,” which calls for interpreting minor facts to suggest a greater threat. Judge Kessler, for example, refused to infer that Mr. Ahmed was an enemy fighter simply based on a “web of statements” that he had associated with enemy fighters.

She acknowledged that the mosaic approach “is a common and well-established mode of analysis in the intelligence community,” but that the legal system required more specific evidence. Likewise, in January Judge Leon ordered the release of Mohammed el- Gharani, a citizen of Chad, after dismissing the main evidence against him: contradictory statements from two detainees whose credibility the government itself had “directly called into question.”

In the absence of guidelines from Congress and the president for evaluating preventive detention cases, these judges have succeeded in coming up with their own, individual approaches. Yet whenever ground rules seem ad hoc, people worry about fairness — is the man in the next courtroom getting a better shake? One step toward assuring the public that justice will be uniform is to establish clear standards.

At the top of the list, the government could clearly state what makes a person subject to indefinite detention by the president. Is “supporting” the enemy enough? If so, what exactly is “support?” And, once a judge has concluded that someone has been unjustifiably detained, what is the president required to do?

Seventeen of the 26 detainees who’ve been cleared for release by judges remain in custody. President Obama has given mixed signals on how he views the issue. He has resisted a judge’s order to release immediately 13 Chinese Uighurs, saying that the courts can’t override the president’s discretion to decide when detainees will be freed. Yet that position contrasts sharply with his message in a recent televised speech, when he said he accepted judges’ rulings that certain prisoners should be released. “The courts have spoken,” Mr. Obama said. “We must abide by these rulings.”

But as these cases show, neither the guidelines for deciding the cases nor the consequences of the decisions are quite so clear.

Chisun Lee, a lawyer, is a reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative-reporting group.

Due Process Rights for US Citizens Trump Any Government Action, Says US Supreme Court
LINK
Let's use this in the war to get FAPE for our children. E-Accountability OPINION
We have a civil war going on right now inside the borders of the United States.

One side has citizens that believe in a free and appropriate education for their children - all children - in public schools that respect, nurture, challenge, encourage and support the child. This side has special needs children and their parents who object to being held against their will in a system that takes away their rights to FAPE, their funding for resources and services, and an equal opportunity to succeed in school and in life.The first army has enlisted parents, guardians, citizens who have children that are needy in some way, or care about due process rights and diversity in a transforming way. Even though this group has no organized lobby - some say the other side actively sabotages this effort - its' members will fight to preserve a democratic, "all are equal before the law" perspective that permeates everything that they say and do, including speaking out for civil rights of all citizens. They are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and members of various other groups all joined by a philosophy, a moral and ethical imperative to protect anyone who acts in a lawful way to protect their rights under the Constitution.

The other side has soldiers who believe that they must protect this country from terrorists, and promote the policy that ANYONE can be a terrorist, and that the next suicide bomber is actually your next door neighbor. At least, this view assures them the advantage of establishing a grain of distrust for anyone who they dont like. They have the money and power to transform almost anyone into someone who cannot be trusted.This army will question the right of the disabled, the poor, the homosexual, the "non-christian" very old, or the person who cannot understand/speak English to belong, and will set their well-indoctrinated lawyers on any person who dares to violate their Mission, which is to set up an America based upon their agenda, with secrecy, false claims, and outright lies about the rights of people who see the world from a different perspective. People who see the world differently have, basically, no "right" to. It's not in the best interests of the US, in other words, to honor anyone's actions who cannot assist movement toward the Goals, just stated, of this army. And they constantly work toward forcing their agenda onto the American public through appointments to our highest courts. Often, but not always, they succeed in discarding the due process rights of someone or a group of someones that they dont like, and examples of this can be found every day in the evaluation conferences and "Impartial" Hearings of cases brought to honor special education laws and regulations.

We congratulate the US Supreme Court in giving army #1 above a victory in affirming our right to due process, even in times of "war", and hope that education reformers and activists will translate this ruling into combat for the due process rights of parents to bring cases as individuals to federal court.

Betsy Combier
Founder, Parentadvocates.org
President, The E-Accountability Foundation

Court Affirms Due Process Rights of Enemy Combatants
By Tony Mauro, New York Law Journal
June 29, 2004
LINK

WASHINGTON - In a historic pair of decisions affirming due process rights even in a time of war, the U.S. Supreme Court largely repudiated the Bush administration's view that enemy combatants and detainees can be held indefinitely without access to federal court habeas corpus review.

In both cases - Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, No. 03-6696, involving U.S. citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi, captured in Afghanistan and held in the United States, and Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, brought by Australians and Kuwaitis detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - different 6-3 majorities made it clear the government had gone too far in seeking unchecked power to detain and interrogate individuals in the war on terror.

Detainees in both settings are entitled to review by neutral adjudicators, the Court said in a major departure from its usual wartime deference to the wishes of the executive.

In a third much-awaited ruling on the war on terror, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, No. 03-1027, a 5-4 majority sidestepped the issue of whether the government has the authority to indefinitely hold Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen seized, unlike Mr. Hamdi, on American soil two years ago as a material witness with al Qaeda connections.

The Court found that Mr. Padilla's habeas corpus petition had been filed in the wrong court - the Southern District of New York instead of in South Carolina, where he is being held at a Navy brig. If the case is refiled in the proper court, Mr. Padilla would presumably receive due process similar to what the Court said was required for Mr. Hamdi. (See related story)

Donna Newman, Mr. Padilla's court-appointed attorney, said yesterday that when the opinions are read together, a majority of the justices have concluded that an "American on American soil cannot be detained, that it's unconstitutional. All we have now is a delay in the inevitable."

The Court also reminded the administration that the Court, and no one else, is the final arbiter of the boundaries between the branches of government.

"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens," declared Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the Court in Hamdi. "The threats to military operations posed by a basic system of independent review are not so weighty as to trump a citizen's core rights to challenge meaningfully the government's case and to be heard by an independent adjudicator." She also said that Mr. Hamdi "unquestionably" has the right of access to a lawyer.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson and other government lawyers sat glumly as the decisions were announced on the Court's next-to-last day of the term.

Justice Antonin Scalia added to the drama by reading from a dissent in Hamdi that went even further in rejecting the administration's position. Joined by Justice John Paul Stevens - a rare pairing - Justice Scalia said the U.S. Constitution offered only one way to achieve the administration's goal: suspension of habeas corpus by a vote of Congress, a step that has not been taken on the mainland United States since Reconstruction.

"If civil rights are to be curtailed during wartime, it must be done openly and democratically as the Constitution requires," he declared.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only justice who offered general support for the administration's position in Hamdi, leading some commentators yesterday to view it as an 8-1 defeat for the administration.

Justice David Souter also read from a concurrence in Hamdi, which, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, asserted that the government lacks authority to detain Mr. Hamdi. But they joined in Justice O'Connor's judgment that Mr. Hamdi now deserves habeas protection.

The administration's only clear victory yesterday appeared to be that five justices in the Hamdi case agreed that his detention as an enemy combatant was authorized by the resolution passed by Congress a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Justice O'Connor made that concession to the government's position in her plurality ruling joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.

Justice Thomas dissented on other grounds, but appeared to agree the detention was authorized. Justice O'Connor's support for the detention appears to be limited to the period of "active combat," not an indefinite period.

Some administration supporters, while disappointed, sought to emphasize that victory in reacting to the rulings.

"It doesn't seem to be much of a defeat for the administration," said Paul Kamenar of the Washington Legal Foundation.

"While the Court affirmed the president's authority to declare terrorism suspects as enemy combatants, the decisions are troubling and open the door to the alarming prospect of subjecting military decisions involving the war on terrorism to the federal courts," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which filed briefs in the cases for the administration.

Criticism and Rejoicing

U.S. Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, who also supported the administration before the Court, criticized the rulings.

"I am a little concerned about the new constraints that the Supreme Court has placed on the president as commander in chief. I hope that they don't represent handcuffs," he said.

But civil liberties groups rejoiced at what American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Steve Shapiro called "a very stinging and watershed defeat" for the administration's "unprecedented claims."

"These decisions make clear, by justices that are not traditionally liberal allies, that the courts have a very important role to play in checking the executive's power, even in wartime," said Deborah Pearlstein of Human Rights First.

American Bar Association President Dennis Archer said the Court had reaffirmed a bedrock democratic principle: "that U.S. citizens deprived of their liberty are entitled to contest the basis of their detentions in a court of law, and fundamental fairness requires access to counsel to assist them in that challenge."

Bettina B. Plevan, president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, praised the rulings for reaffirming "the essential role of the courts in preserving civil liberties and the rule of law."

"The combined effect of these decisions is to assure that courts are available to review a broad range of Executive actions, including the use of military commissions, in the detention and punishment of detainees," she said in a statement.

Former appeals court Judge John Gibbons, who argued the Guantanamo case on behalf of the detainees, said, "This is a good day for the rule of law."

Mr. Gibbons said he and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which also represented the Guantanamo detainees, would seek to work with the Justice Department to facilitate "fair and prompt hearings for our clients."

The exact contours of the due process the Court wants for enemy combatants or Guantanamo detainees are unclear. Justice O'Connor said a citizen-detainee such as Mr. Hamdi is entitled to "receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the government's factual assertions before a neutral decisionmaker."

But she also said any proceedings "may be tailored" so as not to burden the executive branch at a time of war. She said, for example, that hearsay evidence could be admitted and that a presumption in favor of the government could be allowed. Such procedures, she said, would guarantee that "the errant tourist, embedded journalist, or local aid worker" would be able to rebut government arguments in favor of detention.

"We think it unlikely that this basic process will have the dire impact on the central functions of warmaking that the government forecasts," she added.

'Rasul' Case

In the Rasul ruling, Justice Stevens, writing for the majority, specifically stated that he was offering no opinion on what kind of proceedings would be appropriate for the Guantanamo detainees.

"What is presently at stake is only whether the federal courts have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the executive's potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing," he said, adding that his answer was "in the affirmative."

Justice Stevens also rejected the administration's view that because Guantanamo is on Cuban soil, U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction for habeas review of the detainees' imprisonment. He described Guantanamo as "territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control."

In dissent, Justice Scalia said the detainees "are not located within the territorial jurisdiction of any federal district court. One would think that is the end of the case."

He also called the ruling a "breathtaking" expansion of rights for aliens that "boldly expands the scope of the habeas statute to the four corners of the earth."

Justice Scalia was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas in dissent.

U.S. May Bring Terror Charges Against Padilla
By Dan Christensen, New York Law Journal
June 29, 2004
LINK

The U.S. attorney's office in Miami is preparing to indict alleged "dirty bomber" suspect and former Broward County resident Jose Padilla as early as next month on terror-related charges, according to a Justice Department source.

The filing of an indictment, which would come on orders from the White House, would effectively end Mr. Padilla's two-year status as a federal detainee without charge.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on Mr. Padilla's lawsuit challenging his detention. The Court said he should have named as a defendant the military officer in charge of the U.S. Navy brig where he is being held, not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (See related story.)

But as a practical matter, the detention question could become moot if the government names Mr. Padilla in an active criminal case now unfolding in the Southern District of Florida. A Justice Department source has told the Daily Business Review, and affiliate of the New York Law Journal, that Mr. Padilla, a U.S. citizen who lived near Fort Lauderdale in the mid-1990s, would be charged in a superseding indictment in the terror case against a former friend, Adham Amin Hassoun.

Mr. Hassoun is a Sunrise computer programmer who also has been in federal custody for two years. He faces more than 50 years in prison following indictments in January and March on gun possession, lying and obstruction of justice charges related to his alleged efforts to promote "global jihad."

The decision as to whether federal prosecutors in Miami will ask a grand jury to name Mr. Padilla as a Hassoun co-defendant will be made by President George W. Bush, according to the Justice Department source, It is not known what types of allegations would be brought against Mr. Padilla.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Russell R. Killinger has told a federal judge that new charges are likely to be filed in Mr. Hassoun's case through a superseding indictment as early as mid-July. Mr. Killinger declined to discuss the matter, or to confirm that Mr. Padilla is a target.

New York lawyer Donna R. Newman, Mr. Padilla's court-appointed attorney for the case in the Southern District, did not say whether she knows her client might be charged.

"We'd heard rumors," she said.

Ms. Newman said she will seek a hearing for her client in U.S. District Court in South Carolina as soon as possible. She said that if Mr. Padilla is charged in the Florida case, he would formally enter the criminal justice system and she would expect his case to "proceed in the normal course."

Reached at his summer home in Massachusetts, Fort Lauderdale lawyer Fred Haddad, who represents Mr. Hassoun, when asked to comment on the government's plans to name Mr. Padilla as a co-defendant said it was "not outside the realm of possibility."

The Justice Department source who spoke on condition of anonymity would not disclose the substance of the proposed criminal charges against Mr. Padilla, 33.

But the Daily Business Review has learned the charges involve terror allegations other than the most sensational accusations against him - that he plotted with top of al Qaeda leaders to detonate a nuclear device in a U.S. city or blow up apartment buildings.

If he is indicted, Mr. Padilla's detention at the Navy's Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., would end. He would be turned over to civilian authorities by the Department of Defense and be brought to Miami for arraignment and trial, the Justice Department source said.

Newly appointed U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke would preside over the case. Judge Cooke, a former chief inspector general for Florida Governor Jeb Bush, was randomly assigned to the Hassoun case by the clerk's office on June 8, shortly after her arrival on the bench, according to court documents.

Expanding Investigation

On Friday, the Daily Business Review reported that recent government court filings disclosed that the existing criminal charges against Mr. Hassoun are part of a "wider, ongoing" terror probe involving "unindicted co-conspirators" who have not been identified.

Mr. Hassoun's indictment accused him of perjuring himself to hide his work raising funds and recruiting fighters in support of a global jihad. Mr. Hassoun, detained without bond in the Palm Beach County Jail, has pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Hassoun is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta a deportation order issued in secret against him in December 2002 by a U.S. immigration judge in Miami.

Mr. Hassoun acknowledges that he crossed paths with Mr. Padilla in the 1990s, when the two men attended the same Fort Lauderdale mosque.

Mr. Hassoun was detained in 2002 for overstaying the visa he used to enter the country in 1989. After hearing confidential evidence from the FBI, the judge declared Mr. Hassoun a terrorist, and said he "had contact" with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Padilla was arrested May 8, 2002, on arrival at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on a material witness warrant issued by a Manhattan federal court in connection with a grand jury investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He allegedly was carrying $10,000 in al Qaeda cash.

But Mr. Hassoun, who has read some of the 10,000 pages of national security wiretap transcripts that were recently declassified and released to his attorney in pretrial discovery, said in interviews last week that the government is seriously considering adding Mr. Padilla as a co-defendant in the case.

Mr. Hassoun said in an interview that the government is trying to turn what he described as his limited and harmless friendship with Mr. Padilla into something sinister. He said the two became acquainted in 1996 or 1997 when they worshipped together.

When Mr. Padilla flew in 1998 from Miami to Cairo, where he spent the next 18 months. Mr. Hassoun helped raise money for Mr. Padilla's airline ticket and to help him get settled in Egypt. "We asked the community to chip in," Mr. Hassoun said.

Between 1998 and 2000, Mr. Padilla telephoned Mr. Hassoun several times. Mr. Hassoun said the conversations amounted to small talk about Mr. Padilla's new life in Egypt.

"I didn't talk more than five times with Padilla," Mr. Hassoun said.

But U.S. national security agents apparently bugged those calls.

Mr. Hassoun said that transcripts among more than 10,000 pages of declassified Foreign Intelligence Service Surveillance Act intercepts that were released to comply with pre-trial discovery requirements. They remain hidden from public view by a protective order.

Mr. Hassoun said the Justice Department was trying to make him a "scapegoat" in the war on terror.

"They're trying to make some science fiction story," said Mr. Hassoun, who also uses the alias, Abu Sayyaf, according to the government. "They have something big here and it's like a maze. 'Look at what characters we have: Padilla, Hassoun, El Shukrijuma.' They've got something they have to bring to court."

Mr. Hassoun was referring to Adnan G. El Shukrijuma, another ex-Broward resident, pilot and former acquaintance at the mosque and today one of seven fugitive al Qaeda suspects who are the focus of an international manhunt. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said Mr. Shukrijuma and others are planning a major attack this summer on U.S. soil.

Mr. Shukrijuma is not involved in the Hassoun case, the Justice Department source said.

From Capitol Hill Blue
Opinion
Supremes to Bush: You Ain't Above the Law
By DALE McFEATTERS
Jun 29, 2004, Capitol Hill Blue

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor put it very well:

"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad."

That said, the Supreme Court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi, a young American-born Saudi taken captive in Afghanistan, can challenge his confinement and treatment in the U.S. courts.

The ruling was a significant judicial rebuff to the Bush administration's assertion that it had the right to hold "illegal combatants" indefinitely, without charge and without recourse to courts and lawyers.

Said O'Connor, "We have long since made it clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

The court did uphold the legality of Hamdi's incarceration under war powers Congress granted President Bush immediately after 9/11, while reaffirming Hamdi's right to challenge both his imprisonment and the law that put him there.

And so too can the 600 or so detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a separate decision, the court said the government cannot deny them due process and the detainees also have the right to appeal to the federal courts. The prison opened in January 2002 and so far only six detainees have been charged and none has gone to trial, although one, an Australian, is to appear before a military tribunal.

The two decisions leave much for the lower courts to sort out, but the high court made a welcome statement that the U.S. Constitution can't be waived.

Regrettably, the court did not address the imprisonment of Jose Padilla, also held without charge or trial and mostly incommunicado. Hamdi's U.S. citizenship is problematic, and he does seem to have been picked up on a battlefield with an AK-47 in his hands. Padilla is incontestably an American, and he was arrested in May 2002 getting off a plane in Chicago. The administration's only explanation for a complete denial of his constitutional rights has been vague assertions that Padilla might have been plotting some kind of terrorist action.

By 5 to 4, the justices said that Padilla had filed in the wrong district court and named the wrong respondent in his suit. He will have to refile, starting all over again, because the court said that while his case may indeed have "profound significance," it wasn't significant enough to "bend jurisdictional rules."

To lay persons, that sounds like legalese for "punt."

(Contact Dale McFeatters at McFeattersD@SHNS.com)

Indeed, this is a humiliating defeat for President Bush's legal strategy for fighting the war on terror.

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