MarkBenjamin
Crime

Gitmo Trial May Mean Obama Will Sign Off on KSM’s Death

By Mark Benjamin | April 5, 2011 | +

Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement Monday that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 plotters will be tried in military commissions rather than civilian courts means that KSM might face lethal injection at Guantanamo, and the President might have to personally sign off on his death.

If it is a capital case, Holder’s decision draws the President directly into the judicial process. In civilian court, a judge assigns the death penalty according to sentencing guidelines. In a military commission, the President must explicitly approve a death sentence. And the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which governs those cases, gives the President wide latitude to use his own judgment in a capital case.

“That part of the sentence providing for death may not be executed until approved by the President,” the law states. “In such a case, the President may commute, remit, or suspend the sentence, or any part thereof, as he sees fit.”

That law is silent on the method of execution, but lethal injection is the military’s official execution method. And while the Army’s death row is at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, experts in military law suspect KSM’s lethal injection would probably be carried out at GTMO. “I’m assuming the same pattern will be followed, except for the location,” says Scott Silliman of Duke Law School.

(The military hasn’t executed anybody since 1961, though there are seven people on death row at Fort Leavenworth.)

In KSM’s case, a panel of 12 commissioned officers would have to vote unanimously to sentence the alleged terrorist to death. The law bars the introduction of evidence obtained by torture, but does allow hearsay under certain, very limited circumstances.

There has been some confusion about whether it might be more difficult to execute KSM via military commission if he pleads guilty to a capital offense, since the law clearly allows a jury to administer the death penalty, but is silent on how to handle a guilty plea in such a case. Silliman predicts the military judge might simply reject the plea, allowing the case to move forward, and conceivably toward the President’s desk.

Related Topics: Crime

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  • http://shortplaysaboutrealpeople.wordpress.com Michael Maiello

    Obama isn’t anti death penalty. He said during the 2008 campaign: “”I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes.”

  • nflfoghorn

    By sheer volume of death and destruction he deserves the death penalty. But that still leaves no compensation, no revenge, no easing of pain. Are we any better than he is?

  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks
  • americanwithabrain

    If he’s convicted may I push the plunger? Better yet, may I fill the syringes? I can use some muriatic acid or somthing nastier.

  • http://2thirdsrocks.wordpress.com 2thirdsrocks

    Oh please! Spare us the sanctimony.

  • http://2thirdsrocks.wordpress.com 2thirdsrocks

    Now we’re talkin’!

  • http://derekg.wordpress.com/ Derek

    If nothing else this will allow Obama to cozy up even closer to his right-wing buddies.

  • http://2thirdsrocks.wordpress.com 2thirdsrocks

    Flipping the switch on a mass murderer is cozying up to conservatives? Actually a no brainer for any president, right or left. To try him and not kill him would be political suicide.

  • pintortwo

    The law bars the introduction of evidence obtained by torture, but does allow hearsay under certain, very limited circumstances.
    .
    Do we have a case?

  • http://derekg.wordpress.com/ Derek

    Denying him due process and lowering himself to his level is right-wing. I don’t know any liberals who support either one of those actions.

  • liberalmeltdown

    To those that wring their hands about executing terrorists, ask yourself this: If you do nothing to stop the expansion of terrorism around the world, what good are you? And yes, killing KSM will have an effect. One thing is certain, he won’t have a voice to stir up more hatred.

  • pintortwo

    I think also that if KSM were tried in civilian court the depths of torture and hearsay would be probed in a public way– KSM’s defense would contend that the government’s case is based on info obtained via waterboarding (torture) and informants (hearsay). It would reveal the ugliness that was authorized at the highest levels and that our methods were often shoddy, lazy, callous and deceitful.
    .
    The previous administration would be, in a sense, put on trial too. Obama’s continued policy of looking forward, never back is, I believe, part of what Derek refers to as cozying up to the right-wing.

  • diane1976

    Holder is saying that he has been forced to compromise on a principle of justice because of political pressure.

    If he had any sense of honour, he would resign from his post in order to uphold the principle in which he believes.

    But maybe principle and honour have gone out of style, relics of the original British Parliamentary system, no longer considered important. That’s certainly the case with our “Harper Government” in Canada. Maybe in the US too.

  • diane1976

    People in Guantanamo are voiceless anyway. What have you heard lately from any of them?

    KSM appears to be unbalanced, having claimed to be responsible for an impossible number of terrorist acts and having sent intelligence officers down countless dead end trails.

    He might have been out of his mind before he went to Gtmo, or maybe the torture did it. Either way a trial in any court is a farce, whatever his actual role.

    It’s hardly a surpeise that Obama believes in the death penalty. He has ordered people to be murdered without any trials at all (targeted assassinations).

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