U.S. opposes any delay in habeas dismissals
on Jul 13, 2007 at 6:20 pm
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear appeals in the Guantanamo Bay detainee cases should not be allowed to bar federal judges from going ahead and dismissing all existing habeas challenges by prisoners at the military prison on the Naval base in Cuba, the Justice Department argued Friday in a new filing in the D.C. Circuit Court. The government urged the Circuit Court to leave intact its Feb. 20 ruling against detainee rights — the one the Supreme Court will be reviewing next Term. Thus, the Department urged the appeals court to reject the detainees’ plea to recall the mandates that put that ruling formally into effect. The new Department document can be found here.
Once the Circuit Court decided that Congress had stripped the courts of power to review detainees’ habeas claims, the government contended, that was binding law, and District Courts should now dismiss all such cases. If the Supreme Court ultimately overturns the Circuit Court, the document contended, detainees’ lawyers can seek to reinstate their clients’ habeas claims.
A number of habeas cases already have been dismissed by District judges or by the Circuit Court, the Department noted. Those dismissals would remain in effect even if the Circuit Court were to recall the mandates in the other cases as the detainees’ lawyers asked, it added. That would mean inconsistent results in similar cases, it said.
The detainees’ lawyers want the mandates in the detainee cases pulled back, in order to ensure that detainees could take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling in their favor, should that emerge next Term. In the meantime, they have argued against dismissal of habeas cases that are now in District Courts, because judges have issued protective orders in those cases that assure access to lawyers, protection of information in detainee files, and bans on transferring detainees out of Guantanamo without advance notice.
In arguing against recall of the mandates, the Justice Department contended that the detainees would be protected even in the face of dismissals of pending cases by the protective order the government has proposed — not yet passed upon by the Circuit Court, but vigorously challenged by detainee lawyers as inadequate. The Department also added that information in detainee files would not be destroyed under the order it has proposed. (The Circuit Court is weighing competing proposals on protective orders in the pending cases of Bismullah v. Gates, docket 06-1197, and Parhat v. Gates, 06-1397. Those cases were argued in the Circuit Court May 15. The Supreme Court is also awaiting the rulings in those cases before it schedules briefing in the detainee cases for next fall.)
On the possible ending of orders to bar transfers out of Guantanamo without advance notice, the Justice Department argued that no detainee is transferred to a country where torture is likely to occur, so lack of advance notice of transfers would result in no harm to detainees.
