‘Enemy combatant’ gets his day in court; justice is done

Jose Padilla was convicted by a jury in Miami of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, and faces many years — perhaps life — in prison.

But Padilla’s conviction comes five years too late — with most of those years being wasted by the Justice Department arguing that Padilla wasn’t entitled to a trial. That Padilla was a U.S. citizen, arrested on U.S. soil made no difference to the Bush administration, which initially argued that Padilla could be held indefinitely, without charge and without trial on nothing more than the president’s declaration that Padilla was an “enemy combatant.”

Padilla was convicted by a federal jury after having finally received the trial to which he was entitled. He will now receive something else he deserves: punishment.

We wrote our first editorial about Padilla more than five years ago. At the time, Padilla, a New York native who was reared in Chicago, was being held incommunicado in a military cell, without a lawyer or the right to see a judge. He was accused of plotting to set off a “dirty bomb” on U.S. soil, a charge that was subsequently dropped.

Most judges who heard the arguments ruled that Padilla was entitled to be charged and face his accuser: the United States government. On the eve of the case going to the Supreme Court, the administration announced that it was dropping its “enemy combatant” claim and the dirty bomb charges and filing new charges against Padilla in federal court. It was obvious that the administration was fearful of losing in the Supreme Court.

Weak defense

Padilla was instead charged with two co-defendants with being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense claimed that the three were only trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with humanitarian aid and that the defendants were not using code words in conversations that bordered on gibberish.

The jury was unconvinced.

There will be years of appeals, just as there were years of legal wrangling to get this far. Eventually, perhaps, the court record will be so clear that there can be no question that justice has been done. We can only hope for as much.

But it will be hard to erase the first impressions. Padilla’s arrest was announced in June 2002, a month after the fact, by no less a spokesman than then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. He told reporters, "I am pleased to announce today a significant step forward in the war on terrorism. We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological device, or 'dirty bomb' in the United States."

But neither Ashcroft nor his successor, Alberto Gonzales, ever offered proof of that accusation. The government’s contention that a man could be held indefinitely on the strength of a presidential declaration was so broad that it inspired liberal and conservative civil libertarians to help argue Padilla's case. The Cato Institute, the Center for National Security Studies, the Constitution Project, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, People for the American Way, and the Rutherford Institute filed friend of the court briefs demanding that Padilla be given an opportunity to defend himself.

Padilla has been given that chance, and he failed.

It is time, now, for the government to abandon its remaining claims of extraordinary latitude in holding people without charge or trial.

It is time to start rebuilding our reputation as a nation of laws, where the law applies to everyone— the accuser and the accused alike.