JOIN ANTI-TORTURE ACTIVISTS PROTESTING ROBERTS' SUPPORT FOR TORTURE
AND ATTACK ON THE CONSTITUTION, KNAPP CENTER, DRAKE U AT 2 PM.
Anti torture activists will be on hand this afternoon at Drake
University's Knapp Center in Des Moines this afternoon to protest
Chief Justice Roberts' attacks on habeas corpus and his support for
torture protested.
Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. will deliver
the 11th Dwight D. Opperman Lecture in Constitutional Law at Drake
University today, Thursday, Oct. 2. The lecture, which is free and
open to the public, will start at 3 p.m. in the Drake Knapp Center,
2525 Forest Ave., Des Moines. Protesters will gather in front of the
center with signs and banners starting at 2 PM.
On June 12, 2008, Chief Justice Roberts dissented from the Supreme
Court ruling on BOUMEDIENE v. BUSH, that foreign terrorism suspects
held at Guantanamo Bay and other US prisons have rights under the
Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
Roberts disagreed with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who writing for the
court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and
remain in force, in extraordinary times" In his dissent, Roberts
characterized the military commissions established by the Bush
administration that accepted testimony gained under torture and the
use of evidence kept secret from the accused, "the most generous set
of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this
country as enemy combatants."
Roberts' dissent also disagrees with then commander at Guantanamo,
Major General Jay Hood, who acknowledged to The Wall Street Journal
on Jan. 26, 2005, that: "Sometimes we just didn't get the right
folks," and that the reason those "folks" were still in Guantanamo was
that "[n]obody wants to be the one to sign the release papers . . . .
There's no muscle in the system."
No comments:
Post a Comment