SCOTT TUROW ON JOSE PADILLA

Author and attorney Scott Turow muses about the Jose Padilla case:

CHICAGO -- On June 1, Deputy Attorney General James Comey called a press conference to discuss the evidence the government says it has amassed against the alleged "dirty bomber," Jose Padilla. While Comey's revelations were widely reported, the impropriety of his actions seems to have passed largely unremarked. Acknowledging that he was playing to "the court of public opinion," Comey claimed to tell "the full story of Jose Padilla," disclosing informants' claims about the prisoner and several statements Padilla allegedly made while in custody. Comey suggested that the statements showed Padilla to be a dangerous al-Qaida associate intent on taking untold American lives.
At the same time, Comey acknowledged that the government did not expect to offer Padilla any forum in which to refute or question its alleged evidence, and dodged questions about the questionable timing of releasing such incendiary information while the Supreme Court is nearing decision on Padilla's case, which raises the legality of his detention by the president. To me, as a former federal prosecutor and a criminal defense lawyer, Comey's performance constituted one more legally and ethically dubious maneuver by our government in a case that I already regarded as one of the most troubling in memory.
Padilla's case raises probably the starkest civil liberties questions that have come with the war on terrorism: Do the law and the Constitution permit the government to imprison a U.S. citizen indefinitely, without the benefit of a lawyer or a court hearing, merely on the president's word that this American is a potential terrorist?

This case has more than troubling implications for civil rights in post-9/11 America. Read the whole thing and be afraid...be very afraid.