Something else to keep an eye on in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s defense authorization mark-up: via Satyam Khanna, Steve Vladeck finds the remnant of a much-denounced smear on attorneys who have defended Guantanamo Bay detainees in the bill.
[S]ection 1037 of the Act [page
GUANTANAMO BAY — This morning, attorneys for Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen charged with murder, conspiracy and material support for terrorism, will attempt to persuade a military judge to exclude from his military commission every statement Khadr made to a U.S. interrogator. They will argue, as they have in More…
Air Force Col. Morris Davis was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions before his 2006 resignation in protest over what he considered to be the injustice of the system. And he has nothing but commendations for Adm. Bruce MacDonald, who’s reportedly about to become the new “convening More…
Mike Isikoff scoops the world that retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald is going to be appointed new chief “convening authority” of the revamped military commissions — basically the guy who decides if prospective detainees will receive the military-commissions version of indictments — a sign that the new commissions are More…
To build on one aspect of Daphne’s post, there was an interesting debate during the July 7 Senate hearing on military commissions about the degree to which it was feasible to expect soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan to consider the courtroom admissibility of statements they extract from More…
Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the Navy judge advocate general, has some problems with the Obama administration’s desire to place a “voluntariness” standard on evidence entered into military commissions. “This is an area where I do disagree with the administration and I think the [Senate Armed Services] committee got it More…
All three witnesses — the Defense Department’s Jeh Johnson; the Justice Department’s David Kris; and the Navy Judge Advocate General, Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald — praised the Senate Armed Services Committee’s new legislative initiative to reform the military commissions. But MacDonald went a bit further from a civil libertarian perspective More…
Remember in May, when President Obama spoke about five categories of terrorism-related detainees for which his administration was creating or updating the legal architecture to process? Category two — detainees who “violate the laws of war and are therefore best tried through military commissions” — will be debated in More…
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