More On Padilla

It's my personal policy to not question the verdict reached by jurors. And I won't here. I suspect that given the nature of the trial and given the instructions by the judge, the jury worked within those constraints to reach a rational verdict. Unless you're in the courtroom everyday hearing all the evidence as the jurors do, you simply can't second guess them.

But .....

Slate's TP:

After a three-month trial, jurors came to a decision in a little more than a day. The NYT talks to a juror who says she had pretty much made up her mind before deliberations began. Everyone says the most damning evidence against Padilla was a "mujahideen data form" that was described as an application to join an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. The form had Padilla's fingerprints, but lawyers questioned its authenticity and said he could have handled the document while under military custody.

Overall, the Post is the most outwardly skeptical of the evidence presented in the case, describing it as "relatively thin" on charges that Padilla intended to commit murder overseas and pointing out that the wiretapped calls presented to the jury "offered few specific clues of his intentions." Defense lawyers accused the prosecution of employing "scare tactics" and criticized the decision to play an interview with Osama Bin Laden, which they said was only used so jurors would think of Sept. 11. The LAT says Padilla's mother vowed her son would appeal. Lawyers for the two other men also promised to appeal saying that if it weren't for Padilla their clients would have been acquitted.

At best it was a very thin case. And if that statement about that juror having made up his/her mind before the trial is true, then we have a another problem here.

The larger issue is one that likely didn't come before the jury. Should a U.S. citizen be tried by the state when that defendant has been 1) detained indefinitely without any rights, 2) tortured, 3) denied any due process? Whatever Padilla did, and the "what he did is a very big if", he should have gotten off simply due to the government's violation of the Constitution.

Put another way, the jury should never have heard the case because the facts were de facto tainted, making it impossible to reach a rational verdict. We can only hope that the appeals courts reverse the case and uphold the Constitution. But given our Supreme Court, I'm not holding my breath.