US judge rejects demand to dismiss Padilla case on grounds of torture

In a motion filed last October calling for the case to be dismissed for reasons of “outrageous government misconduct,” Padilla’s lawyers cited a longstanding legal principle that when the actions of the government in bringing an individual to trial “shock the conscience,” the government loses the moral and legal authority to try that individual.

The motion argued that although “the precise contours of what shocks the conscience can be difficult to delineate with certainty, there can be little doubt that the deliberate and repeated torture of an individual over the course of almost four years should and does shock even the most calloused conscience.”

Because of this, Padilla’s lawyers concluded, “through its illegal conduct, the government has forfeited its right to prosecute Mr. Padilla...”

Judge Cooke, in her 12-page ruling rejecting the motion, argued that dismissing the case on these grounds would “effectively provide a defendant with amnesty for any uncharged crime so long as the government violated the defendant’s due process rights at some prior point”—in other words, it would affirm precisely the legal principle Padilla’s lawyers were invoking.

Judge Cooke also accepted the government’s narrow reading of the legal precedents involving the dismissal of cases on the grounds of government misconduct, according to which the case in question can still proceed to trial provided all evidence obtained illegally is thrown out. Because the prosecution claims it does not plan to use evidence extracted from Padilla during his incarceration in the naval brig, Judge Cooke concluded, the motion is moot.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/padi-a13.shtml