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6 Myths About Trying Mohammed in NYC

US legal system is, in fact, up to this challenge

By Will McCahill,  Newser Staff

Posted Nov 14, 2009 5:31 AM CST
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(Newser) – While the news that Sept. 11 terror suspect Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be tried in New York has created quite a furor, there are also a number of misconceptions floating around about the trial. Andrew Cohen clears up six:

  • Mohammed’s lawyers won’t be able to get the case dismissed because he was waterboarded. It’ll play some role, but the feds wouldn’t bring the case to New York if they didn’t have lots of other evidence.

  • He will be able to find an impartial jury. All it takes is that jurors “be able to set aside their pre-judgments and fairly evaluate the evidence shown at trial,” the CBS legal analyst writes in the Washington Post.
  • A trial in New York doesn’t heighten risks of another terror attack there. The city’s hosted such trials before, and in any case, security for them is “awe-inspiring.”
  • A civilian trial doesn’t mean the feds are waving the white flag. In fact, “a civilian trial is the best chance of ensuring conviction and sentencing.”
  • No judge is going to let Mohammed off on a technicality. This isn’t TV.
  • Mohammed won’t turn the trial into theater. Just too many rules ensuring he’ll behave—not that he won’t try, though.

Five Sept. 11, 2001, attack co-defendants at a hearing at the US Naval Base, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Five Sept. 11, 2001, attack co-defendants at a hearing at the US Naval Base, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.   (AP Photo)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 11 comments
cornelison
Nov 15, 2009 12:22 PM CST
A self-fulfilling prophesy of fear occurs every time cable news interviews alarmists on their shows.
SilenceDogood
Nov 15, 2009 2:12 AM CST
Rocky, you are half right and all wrong. The founders put rights for US citizens in the Constitution, not terrorist and military combatants. To construe that United States constitutional rights extend to terrorists is a poor interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and a gross miscarriage of justice. Habeas Corpus is a right that US citizens have for due process, not foreign military combatants. A military tribunal not too different from the Nuremburg trails would be a better process that what the DA has proposed in this case. The dilution of this crime to a US federal court is a mockery of the deaths of the 9/11 victims at the hands of terrorist. It is tantamount to trying Hitler in Brooklyn for his actions in WWII. The Supreme Court simply ruled the detainees were required to have some form of due process, it did not delineate which system or court should be used. It is our Liberal leaning weenies in the administration that wish to show the world how progressive we are in being civilized and Non-GWB that is forcing this issue. The people are terrorists, not US citizens.
RockyPneumonia
Nov 14, 2009 11:40 AM CST
I love the way that flag-waving Right-Wing Wackos blithely dismiss as "technicalities" the very rights that the Founders so wisely put into the Constitution in order to protect us.

 
New York City • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed • terror trial • 9/11 attacks

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