Appeals court ponders future of war crimes trials

[Draggingtree]

Scotus Blog:

Appeals court ponders future of war crimes trials

 

By Lyle Denniston on Oct 22, 2014 at 1:45 pm

 

Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit listened closely, but noncommittally, on Wednesday to a broad constitutional attack on the system of war crimes tribunals now operating at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The hearing — running more than twice as long as the assigned half-hour — ranged over the trial of Abraham Lincoln’s assassins, a military trial in the Civil War, a sabotage trial during World War II, and an 1895 case involving a Chinese national convicted outside of the regular court system.

 

The point of that exploration was to help the three-judge panel decide whether Congress and the Pentagon have teamed up to create a system of war crimes prosecutions that pushed aside the regular civilian trial courts, in a way that violates the Constitution’s Article III, creating the federal judiciary. The case heard Wednesday seems destined to go to the Supreme Court.

[Draggingtree]

Appeals court sharply narrows war crimes prosecutions

 

By Lyle Denniston on Jun 12, 2015 at 3:09 pm

 

In a ruling that significantly narrows Congress’s power to use military courts to try war crimes cases, a result likely to be tested in the Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday threw out the last remaining conviction of a propagandist for the Al Qaeda global terrorism network. The decision was a major stroke of judicial independence and a strong reaffirmation of the constitutional role of civilian courts.

 

By a vote of two to one, the three-judge panel nullified the conviction of a Yemeni national, Ali Hamza Suliman al Bahlul, for conspiracy to commit war crimes, because that charge is not recognized in international law. If conduct only violates domestic criminal law, and not law recognized internationally, it can only be prosecuted in a civilian court, according to the decision.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/06/appeals-court-sharply-narrows-war-crimes-prosecutions/#more-228958