Among Michael Mukasey’s most controversial decisions as a judge was to sign a material-witness warrant for suspected (and now convicted) al-Qaeda affiliate and U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, which allowed his detention after his mid-2002 arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. A month later, the Defense Department declared Padilla an enemy combatant — a decision that the Justice Department revoked three years later to bring Padilla to criminal trial. Mukasey wrote in an August op-ed that Padilla’s trial showed that “current institutions and statutes are not well suited” to trying terrorists since Padilla’s counsel-free “confession” of being involved in a dirty-bomb plot was inadmissible.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=179595