The Slippery Slope is Here!

One of the primary criticisms of trying terrorists by military commission is the slippery slope which exists in a system not founded on sound legal principles. Proponents of military commissions have argued we needed this separate system to address unique issues involved with trying suspected enemy terrorists, and by creating a separate system we prevent the individual rights protections that apply in Article III prosecutions from being diluted. This is because military commissions are limited to trying non-U.S. citizen “unprivileged belligerents.”

One of the key flaws of this argument is that the Military Commission Act’s limitation on trying only non-U.S. citizens by military commission was not based on any clear legal principle, and nothing would prevent the jurisdiction of these commissions from expanding in the future. Over the past several weeks, the Senate Armed Services Committee has been toying with an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which will push us down this slope.

Among other things, the proposed amendments create a presumption of military detention in certain cases, even when the detainee is a U.S. citizen. And, of course, because the military is not in the business of operating prisons throughout the country, the most likely place for that detention would be Guantanamo. These proposed amendments, coupled with already existing legislation, could result in a suspect—even a U.S. citizen—being detained by the military, sent to Guantanamo and then never able to be tried in an Article III court in the United States.

Welcome the slippery slope.

Interestingly the amendment has enjoyed bi-partisan support in the in the Senate Armed Services Committee. In an op-ed in the Washington Post Senator Levin and Senator McCain recently argued that the proposed amendments are not likely to have much if any impact on current procedures and the legislation gives the President the authority to opt out of the military detention option in a particular case if certain criteria are met. That argument, even if true, does not address the underlying issue: why should military detention be the default option in these cases to begin with?

Is it because the military has proven to be more capable in effectively detaining terrorists or others in the past? The sad history of abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo clearly show the fallacy of that proposition. Is it because the military has proven to be more efficient and effective at trying terrorist suspects? Here again, the long and sad history of the military commissions process and the utter inability of the commissions to effectively, fairly and efficiently try suspected terrorists belies any claim that this is a better format for these trials.

The fact is that the military’s job is to fight and win wars—not to act as the primary governmental institution authorized to detain and try terrorist suspects.

It seems likely that efforts by the Senate Armed Services Committee to add these detainee amendments to the NDAA have much more to do with politics and demagoguery than with legitimate national security concerns. And because these proposed amendments put us clearly on the slippery slope, we are all the worse for it.

Trying Former Soldiers in Federal Court

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the conviction of a former Army Private, Steven D. Green, for sexual assault and the murder of four Iraqi civilians in 2006. What makes this case unique is that Green was tried in federal district court rather than in a military court-martial. By the time Army officials became aware of the allegations against Green, the military had discharged him from the service. Court-martial jurisdiction is based on the status of the soldier at the time of the offense and at the time of trial. Because Green was no longer a member of the military at the time the Army discovered the allegations, court-martial jurisdiction no longer existed.

Prior to 2000, this situation created a jurisdictional gap whereby former service members could avoid criminal prosecution for acts they committed but were not discovered before they were discharged. In 2000, Congress passed the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) to close that gap. Under MEJA, the U.S. Government may prosecute former soldiers for crimes they committed outside the special territorial and maritime jurisdiction of the United States while they were members of the military. Prosecutions under MEJA have been rare, and the case against Steven Green represents one of the few times federal authorities have used the statute.

Use of MEJA to prosecute former service members for crimes committed outside of U.S. territory raise several constitutional issues. The Sixth Circuit opinion in Green addresses a number of these issues, including Green’s contention that MEJA violates separation of powers. Green contended that MEJA violates this principle because it expands the executive’s power to enforce the law by expanding its jurisdiction. The Sixth Circuit rejected this argument. The court agreed that MEJA represents an expansion of executive authority, but that expansion does not come at the expense of another branch of government. Accordingly MEJA is no different than any other federal law that increases the categories of criminal conduct.

This holding is interesting in light of the ongoing debate over whether terrorist suspects should be tried in federal court or in military commissions. Those who have argued for trial in military commissions assert that federal courts lack the necessary tools to handle these cases and, therefore, a special and separate system of adjudication is needed. Cases like Green suggest the opposite. According to the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Green, Congress can in fact provide the executive with the authority to try problematic cases in federal courts, and, if this decision is any indication, courts are likely to give significant deference to those congressional grants of authority.