On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee
grilled Attorney General Eric Holder for hours about his decision to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 hijackers in a New York civilian court. In the hearing, Holder told lawmakers a conviction was assured—and a civil court was the best venue to obtain that. At this point, tempers flared as Republican Sen. John Kyl asked how that could be, given that Mohammed already plead guilty before a military commission: ''How can you be more likely to get a
conviction in a (civilian) court than that?'' Kyle's questioning advanced concerns about the potential of an
acquittal (to say nothing of the prospects of
terrorist grandstanding). Either way, in the wake of the hearing a handful of pundits have thrown a wet blanket on Holder's trial forecast:
- How Can Holder Be So Sure? asks Craig Allen Silverman,
a Denver Lawyer and co-host of KHOW’s Caplis & Silverman Show: "You
cannot ever take a criminal conviction for granted. Few cases are
so strong that an inept prosecutor cannot lose it... Don't get me
wrong. I love the American court system. It is among the
best and fairest on Earth. However, it has flaws which we are willing
to endure and embrace in a normal criminal case. We let lots of guilty
people go free to avoid convicting an innocent person."
- A Conviction Is Not a Fait Accompli, writes Annemarie McAvoy at Fox News: "Holder...ignores the impact that the admitted waterboarding of
terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could have on the terror trials.
Not only will the statements that resulted from the 'torture' of KSM be
withheld from the jury but any evidence that was gathered as a result
of the information we learned from his statements would also be
withheld. This could seriously impact the government's chances of
getting a conviction or a death sentence."
- Defendants Could Successfully File for a Change of Venue, write Eric Lichtblau and Benjamin Weiser in The New York Times: "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s
lawyers, whoever they are, will no doubt question whether he can get a
fair trial from a jury sitting, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
noted, in a Manhattan courthouse 'just blocks away from where the Twin
Towers once stood.' Then will come the inevitable challenges to
interrogation methods used
on Mr. Mohammed during more than six years in detention. The government
has acknowledged waterboarding him 183 times to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks, which he eventually admitted planning. Finally,
if Mr. Mohammed is convicted, defense lawyers will most likely plead
for jurors in New York, historically more cautious about capital
punishment than much of the rest of country, to spare the sentence of
execution and send him to prison for the rest of his life instead."
