Habeas Corpus in The United States - Habeas Corpus in The 21st Century

Habeas Corpus in The 21st Century

The November 13, 2001 Presidential Military Order purported to give the President of the United States the power to detain non-citizens suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism as enemy combatants. As such, that person could be held indefinitely, without charges being filed against him or her, without a court hearing, and without legal counsel. Many legal and constitutional scholars contended that these provisions were in direct opposition to habeas corpus, and the United States Bill of Rights. However in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) the U.S. Supreme Court re-confirmed the right of every American citizen to access habeas corpus even when declared to be an enemy combatant. The Court affirmed the basic principle that habeas corpus could not be revoked in the case of a citizen.

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) Salim Ahmed Hamdan petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging that the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay "violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions." In a 5-3 ruling the Court rejected Congress's attempts to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Congress had previously passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006 which stated in Section 1005(e), "Procedures for Status Review of Detainees Outside the United States":

(1) Except as provided in section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (2)The jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on any claims with respect to an alien under this paragraph shall be limited to the consideration of whether the status determination ... was consistent with the standards and procedures specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals (including the requirement that the conclusion of the Tribunal be supported by a preponderance of the evidence and allowing a rebuttable presumption in favor of the Government's evidence), and to the extent the Constitution and laws of the United States are applicable, whether the use of such standards and procedures to make the determination is consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.

On 29 September 2006, the U.S. House and Senate approved the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a bill which suspended habeas corpus for any alien determined to be an "unlawful enemy combatant engaged in hostilities or having supported hostilities against the United States" by a vote of 65-34. (This was the result on the bill to approve the military trials for detainees; an amendment to remove the suspension of habeas corpus failed 48-51.) President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) into law on October 17, 2006. With the MCA's passage, the law altered the language from "alien detained ... at Guantanamo Bay":

Except as provided in section 1005 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." §1005(e)(1), 119 Stat. 2742.

The Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the MCA amounts to an unconstitutional encroachment on habeas corpus rights, and established jurisdiction for federal courts to hear petitions for habeas corpus from Guantanamo detainees tried under the Act. Under the MCA, the law restricted habeas appeals for only those aliens detained as enemy combatants, or awaiting such determination. Left unchanged was the provision that, after such determination is made, it is subject to appeal in U.S. Court, including a review of whether the evidence warrants the determination. If the status was upheld, then their imprisonment was deemed lawful; if not, then the government could change the prisoner's status to something else, at which point the habeas restrictions no longer applied.

Wikinews has related news: President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006

There is, however, no legal time limit which would force the government to provide a Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing. Prisoners were, but are no longer, legally prohibited from petitioning any court for any reason before a CSRT hearing takes place.

In January 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that in his opinion: "There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There's a prohibition against taking it away." He was challenged by Sen. Arlen Specter who asked him to explain how it is possible to prohibit something from being taken away, without first being granted. Robert Parry wrotes in the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel:

Applying Gonzales’s reasoning, one could argue that the First Amendment doesn’t explicitly say Americans have the right to worship as they choose, speak as they wish or assemble peacefully. Ironically, Gonzales may be wrong in another way about the lack of specificity in the Constitution’s granting of habeas corpus rights. Many of the legal features attributed to habeas corpus are delineated in a positive way in the Sixth Amendment ...

The Department of Justice has taken the position in litigation that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 does not amount to a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed in a 2-1 decision, on February 20, 2007, which the U.S. Supreme Court initially declined to review. The U.S. Supreme Court then reversed its decision to deny review and took up the case in June 2007. In June 2008, the court ruled 5-4 that the act did suspend habeas and found it unconstitutional.

On June 7, 2007, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee with an 11–8 vote split along party lines, with all but one Republican voting against it. Although the Act would restore statutory habeas corpus to enemy combatants, it would not overturn the provisions of the AEDPA which set a statute of limitations on habeas corpus claims from ordinary civilian federal and state prisoners.

On June 11, 2007, a federal appeals court ruled that Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a legal resident of the United States, could not be detained indefinitely without charge. In a two-to-one ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Court held the President of the United States lacks legal authority to detain al-Marri without charge; all three judges ruled that al-Marri is entitled to traditional habeas corpus protections which give him the right to challenge his detainment in a U.S. Court.

In July 2008, the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court rules: "if properly designated an enemy combatant pursuant to the legal authority of the President, such persons may be detained without charge or criminal proceedings for the duration of the relevant hostilities."

On October 7, 2008, US District Court judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled that 17 Uyghurs, Muslims from China's northwestern Xinjiang region, must be brought to appear in his court in Washington, DC, three days later: "Because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, the continued detention is unlawful."

On January 21, 2009, US President Barack Obama issued an executive order regarding the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the individuals held there. This order asserted that " have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus".

Regarding U.S. Citizens accused of supporting terrorism, senator Lindsey Graham has stated before the senate, "When they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them: ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer. You are an enemy combatant, and we are going to talk to you about why you joined Al Qaeda.’"

– U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, 2011

Following the 1 December 2011 vote by the United States Senate to reject an NDAA amendment proscribing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, the ACLU has argued that the legitimacy of Habeas Corpus is threatened: "The Senate voted 38-60 to reject an important amendment would have removed harmful provisions authorizing the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world... We’re disappointed that, despite robust opposition to the harmful detention legislation from virtually the entire national security leadership of the government, the Senate said ‘no’ to the Udall amendment and ‘yes’ to indefinite detention without charge or trial." The New York Times has stated that the vote leaves the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens "ambiguous," with some senators including Carl Levin and Lindsey Graham arguing that the Supreme Court had already approved holding Americans as enemy combatants, and other senators, including Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin, asserting the opposite.