On the Gitmo front, the last several weeks have brought the Bush administration a series of legal defeats. First, Gitmo’s former chief prosecutor turned against the Pentagon, testifying that political interference had tainted the military commissions, set up to prosecute detainees. Then a key legal adviser to the war crimes system was barred from having [...]

“Suddenly, everybody had strong opinions about how we ought to do our job,” testified Air Force Col. Morris Davis yesterday. “If you can get the 9/11 guys charged, you get the victims’ families energized, and if the case is rolling, whoever took the White House would have difficulty stopping this process.”
Davis, the military-commissions-advocate-turned-critic, was testifying [...]

A couple months back, the Law Blog noted that Salim Hamdan — Osama bin Laden’s former driver — gained a star witness in his case: Gitmo’s former chief prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis. Today, Davis, who resigned last year amid a flap with the Defense Department, is expected to testify on Hamdan’s behalf. In a walk-up [...]

After the second mistrial was declared yesterday in the case of the six Miami men charged with plotting to bomb the Sears Tower, the NYT is asking whether, under the Bush administration, terrorism arrests are being over-politicized and under-prosecuted. (Click here for an AP report on the mistrial.)
“In a lot of these cases, the government [...]

The victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result. — Definition of torture in newly-released legal memo written by [...]