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Jose Padilla’s Sentence Strews Displeasure Across Political Divide
by
findingDulcinea Staff
U.S.-born terrorist conspirator Jose Padilla was sentenced to more than 17 years. To some, that was too much; to others life would have been just.
30-Second Summary
Jose Padilla was sentenced to 17 years and 4 months in prison on terror conspiracy charges on Tuesday.
Padilla was initially arrested on charges of plotting to explode a “dirty bomb,” an explosive device designed to spread radioactive waste. He was held in military detention in the United States for three and a half years.
In 2006, his case was transferred to a civilian court just as the Supreme Court was preparing to assess whether his detention was constitutional.
Padilla was eventually convicted of plotting to kill foreign citizens and aiding terrorism.
Prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for Padilla and his two co-defendants. The Justice Department also recommended a maximum sentence.
The sentencing judge, however, said she was compelled to take into account the harsh treatment Padilla endured in military detention.
U.S. media reported that the sentence was lenient given what the government had demanded. The BBC, on the other hand, ran an article with the headline “Padilla given long jail sentence.”
Padilla’s case has stirred a lot of debate, with few commentators saying that justice has been carried out.
Some reacted on the grounds that a terrorist should not enjoy the benefits of the U.S. justice system.
Blogger Andy Worthington writes on AlterNet that Jose Padilla’s sentence is outrageous, as it punishes someone who has not harmed or killed U.S. or foreign citizens.
Other commentators objected to the Bush administration’s handling of terror suspects in general.
Blogger Shaun Mullen called the Padilla case “the ultimate wake-up call to the true character of the Bush administration: imprisoning one of its own citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind and then keeping him for years incommunicado.”
Padilla was initially arrested on charges of plotting to explode a “dirty bomb,” an explosive device designed to spread radioactive waste. He was held in military detention in the United States for three and a half years.
In 2006, his case was transferred to a civilian court just as the Supreme Court was preparing to assess whether his detention was constitutional.
Padilla was eventually convicted of plotting to kill foreign citizens and aiding terrorism.
Prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for Padilla and his two co-defendants. The Justice Department also recommended a maximum sentence.
The sentencing judge, however, said she was compelled to take into account the harsh treatment Padilla endured in military detention.
U.S. media reported that the sentence was lenient given what the government had demanded. The BBC, on the other hand, ran an article with the headline “Padilla given long jail sentence.”
Padilla’s case has stirred a lot of debate, with few commentators saying that justice has been carried out.
Some reacted on the grounds that a terrorist should not enjoy the benefits of the U.S. justice system.
Blogger Andy Worthington writes on AlterNet that Jose Padilla’s sentence is outrageous, as it punishes someone who has not harmed or killed U.S. or foreign citizens.
Other commentators objected to the Bush administration’s handling of terror suspects in general.
Blogger Shaun Mullen called the Padilla case “the ultimate wake-up call to the true character of the Bush administration: imprisoning one of its own citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind and then keeping him for years incommunicado.”
Headline links: The Padilla sentence: lenient or long?
Jose Padilla, who was once accused of plotting to explode a radioactive “dirty bomb,” was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison on Jan. 22. While the original charges against him were dropped, he was found guilty of conspiring to kill people overseas and of aiding terrorists. Although prosecutors had demanded a life imprisonment for Padilla and his two co-defendants, the judge said that she had taken into consideration the "harsh conditions" and "extreme environmental stresses" they had endured in military detention.
Source: The BBC
Brooklyn-born Muslim convert Jose Padilla was sentenced on conspiracy charges to 17 years and 4 months in prison, The New York Times reported. The Times pointed out that the sentence is more lenient than federal sentencing guidelines recommended and described it as a setback to the government, which had requested the maximum sentence.
Source: The New York Times
The Washington Post writes that “the sentence marks another major setback in a terrorism prosecution for the Justice Department, which had urged U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke to sentence Padilla to life in prison.”
Source: The Washington Post
Law professor Steve Vladeck told Voice of America that the claim Padilla had been tortured swayed the judge. VOA reports that Amnesty International says justice will not be served until officials address the torture claims.
Source: Voice of America via GlobalSecurity.org
Opinion & Analysis: Padilla’s sentence; torture charges; justice system
The sentence was just
James Joyner, editor-in-chief of Outside the Beltway, a political Web blog, says Padilla was “entitled to some offset in his sentence” given his unconstitutional detention for three and a half years.
Source: Outside the Beltway
Miscarriage of justice
Blogger Andy Worthington writes on AlterNet that Jose Padilla’s sentence is outrageous, as it punishes someone who has not harmed or killed U.S. or foreign citizens. The case is particularly shocking, Worthington writes, because it sends a clear signal to President George W. Bush that he can detain and torture people with impunity. The blogger points out that Padilla’s case was transferred from the U.S. Supreme Court to a civil court after his ordeal was revealed to the public. “17 years and four months seems to me to be an extraordinarily long sentence for little more than a thought crime,” he concludes.
Source: AlterNet
Torture charges need to be addressed
According to blogger Shaun Mullen, writing in the Moderate Voice, the charges against Padilla were dropped because the government did not want to provoke an investigation into its interrogation practices. Mullen writes that Padilla’s case is “the ultimate wake-up call to the true character of the Bush administration: imprisoning one of its own citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind and then keeping him for years incommunicado.”
Source: The Moderate Voice
Should terror suspects be prosecuted by civilian courts?
“The continued reliance on our criminal justice system as the main domestic weapon in the struggle against terrorism fails on two counts. It threatens not only to leave our nation unprotected but also to corrupt the foundations of the criminal law itself,” writes legal expert John Farmer in a column in the International Herald Tribune.
Source: International Herald Tribune
John Yoo, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer that terror suspects are waging “lawfare” on the United States, referring to Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against the United States over what his lawyers described as his unlawful detention. “Padilla is no innocent,” he writes. Nor should he enjoy the benefits of the civilian criminal-justice system, Yoo concludes.
Source: The Philadelphia Inquierer
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