On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute & People for the American Way File Joint Brief Before Court of Appeals in Defense of Due Process Rights, Rule of Law
WASHINGTON -- Standing firm in the belief that all Americans are constitutionally guaranteed the right to due process, attorneys with The Rutherford Institute and People for the American Way have filed a joint "friend of the court" brief in support of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd in the case of Padilla v. Hanft. Judge Floyd's ruling found that the government could not indefinitely detain Jose Padilla, an American seized on American soil and detained without charge since 2002; instead, it must either charge him with a crime or release him. In their brief, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and People for the American Way argue that by denying Padilla his due process rights, the Bush administration has created a situation where non-citizens suspected of terrorism are afforded more rights and procedural protections than Americans suspected of identical crimes, even if they are seized on American soil. The joint brief, drafted with the Washington, DC,. office of Sidley & Austin, was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in response to a government appeal seeking to overturn the lower court decision. A copy of the brief is available here."If we are to believe President Bush's assurance that we will not allow our enemies to win the war on terror by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms, then we must continue to uphold the rule of law for all Americans," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute.
FBI officials arrested Jose Padilla at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, as a material witness in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States. Held in solitary confinement in a military brig in South Carolina since June 9, 2002, when President Bush declared him to be an "enemy combatant," Padilla has yet to be charged with a crime. In July 2003, a bipartisan coalition of organizations that included The Rutherford Institute filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of Padilla in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Citing the Constitution's ban against indefinite executive detention, the public interest groups argued that "[t]he Framers deliberately vested the Legislature with the power to make law, and denied to the Executive any unilateral authority to determine when people may be detained indefinitely without charge. The Constitution gives the Legislature--and only the Legislature--power to determine when, if ever, extraordinary circumstances authorize the fundamentally intrusive power of detention without charge." In delivering its ruling, the Second Circuit agreed that only Congress can authorize the detention without charge of American citizens seized on American soil. However, on appeal by the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to decide whether President Bush has the power to detain Padilla, ruling on narrow jurisdictional grounds that the case should have been filed in South Carolina instead of New York. More recently, the Supreme Court declined Padilla's appeal for a swift review, leaving it to a federal appeals court in the Fourth Circuit to rule on the matter.
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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