Hibeas Corpus Case

I am a military veteran and have served my country proudly for years; I have served my country with conviction and with no reservation. I am very passionate about this topic and I intend to write and give a brief overview on the of habeas corpus as it pertains to the prisoners detained at the GITMO installation in Guantanamo Bay Cuba.

Soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush administration developed a plan for holding and interrogating prisoners captured during the conflict. They were sent to prison inside a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on land leased from the government of Cuba. Since 2002, over 700 men have been detained at "GITMO." Most have been released without charges or turned over to other governments. In 2011, Congress specifically prohibited the expenditure of funds to transfer GITMO prisoners to detention facilities in the continental United States, making it virtually impossible to try them in civilian courts. An assumption made by the Bush administration in selecting this location was that it was beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The administration wanted to avoid any judicial oversight of how it handled detainees, characterized as "enemy combatants." A possible legal challenge to indefinite detention with no formal charges or judicial proceedings might arise from the habeas corpus provision of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Under this provision, persons (prisoners/terrorist) detained by the government are entitled to a judicial hearing to determine if there is any legal basis for their detention. Some legal venues within the United States refer to the right of habeas corpus as the "great writ of liberty" because it is a prisoner's ultimate recourse, to have an impartial judge reviewing the possibility that he is being held illegally by the executives within the legal realm of U.S. rights (e.g., the police or the military). The writ of Habeas Corpus means a body that is being held has the right to be brought before the court and have the charges stated that they are being held for. In layman's terms, you cannot be held for an unknown reason against your will. You have to be charged with something in order to be detained.

In nations that do not honor Habeas Corpus, people simply disappear into prisons without ever having their day in court. An extreme measure to the write of the people, or innocent until proven guilty practice that we follow in the United States. Several controversial Supreme Court cases have come out of GITMO, Boumediene v. Bush is just one example holding that the prisoners had a right to habeas corpus under the United States Constitution and that the Military Commissions of 2006 was an unconstitutional suspension of that right . The primary question that has been debated, but still not clearly resolved, is to what extent the war on terror justifies the President's indefinite detention of "enemy combatants," without the possibility of the minimal judicial review protected by habeas corpus. Another issue in this growing debate, is to what extent Congress must clearly authorize the President to conduct extra-judicial detentions, in order for them to be legal? In 2008, the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush offered some answers to these questions. However, the Courts were deeply divided with the likelihood that the negative repercussions of the war on terror suggest that the continued debate(s) surrounding these important questions will continue to circulate. I believed that with the decisions surrounding Habeas Corpus, the legal and justice divisions have open the flood gates to litigation, tax payers expense, and law suits that will face this country for years to come, not to mention the precedent they have set for future conflicts.

Enemy Combatants are subject to immediate and indefinite detention, regardless of whether or not they may hold U.S. citizenship, and the level of proof necessary to make such a determination is substantially lower than the "reasonable doubt" standard required for a criminal conviction." (Minami, 2002, page 54). When our forefathers adopted the habeas corpus from the English, it is my belief that they had no idea how much of an impact