On Nov 26, 2003, at 8:39 PM, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Note the line: "the Court denied Simkanin the opportunity present any expert defense witnesses or legal evidence".
This is what our country has come to. Secret courts; incarceration with no lawyers, trials, or even charges; "trials" where the defendants are prohibited from presenting any evidence; "Sneak & Peek" secret searches...
"The Terrorists" have indeed won: they are running this asylum.
This has been the norm in American jurisprudence for many decades. Judges routinely decide which "theories of the case" may be presented and which may not. They dictate the language used, the witnesses called, even the legal precedents cited. For this list, we need look no further than a list contributor and meeting attendee from the mid-90s: Keith Henson. Google on Keith's case with the Church of Scientology and read about his conviction in a Riverside, California courtroom. Keith and his lawyers were prevented by order of the judge from presenting their defense. Basically, he was muzzled. And not because he was acting up in court or screaming obscenities. Rather, the Court decided he could neither bring up past behavior by the COS nor could he argue to the jury that saying he had a "Tom Cruise missile" aimed at the Gold Base facility was obviously a joke and that he did not in fact have any way to possess a cruise missile, Tom Cruise or otherwise. Welcome to the Beknighted States of America, where the "free press" is muzzled (or arrested, as in the New American Republic in Baghdad), where judges lay down a narrow track of allowable arguments in a court room, and where the police and government are no longer bound by the precise document which was created to bind them, the Bill of Rights. --Tim May