The Police State Is Closer Than You Think

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Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:27:49 -0700

The Police State Is Closer Than You Think

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Police State Is Closer Than You Think

 

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10564.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Police State Is Closer Than You Think

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

 

10/08/05 " <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/>ICH " -- -- Police

states are easier to acquire than Americans appreciate.

 

The hysterical aftermath of September 11 has put into place the main

components of a police state.

 

Habeas corpus is the greatest protection Americans have against a

police state. Habeas corpus ensures that Americans can only be

detained by law. They must be charged with offenses, given access to

attorneys, and brought to trial. Habeas corpus prevents the despotic

practice of picking up a person and holding him indefinitely.

 

President Bush claims the power to set aside habeas corpus and to

dispense with warrants for arrest and with procedures that guarantee

court appearance and trial without undue delay. Today in the US, the

executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own

initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely. Thus, Americans are no

longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention.

 

These new " seize and hold " powers strip the accused of the protective

aspects of law and give rein to selectivity and arbitrariness. No

warrant is required for arrest, no charges have to be presented before

a judge, and no case has to be put before a jury. As the police are

unaccountable, whoever is selected for arrest is at the mercy of

arbitrariness.

 

The judiciary has to some extent defended habeas corpus against Bush's

attack, but the protection that the principle offers against arbitrary

seizure and detention has been breeched. Whether courts can fully

restore habeas corpus or whether it continues in weakened form or

passes by the wayside remains to be determined.

 

Americans may be unaware of what it means to be stripped of the

protection of habeas corpus, or they may think police authorities

would never make a mistake or ever use their unbridled power against

the innocent. Americans might think that the police state will only

use its powers against terrorists or " enemy combatants. "

 

But " terrorist " is an elastic and legally undefined category. When the

President of the United States declares: " You are with us or against

us, " the police may perceive a terrorist in a dissenter from the

government's policies. Political opponents may be regarded as " against

us " and thereby fall in the suspect category. Or a police officer may

simply have his eye on another man's attractive wife or wish to settle

some old score. An enemy combatant might simply be an American who

happens to be in a foreign country when the US invades. In times

before our own when people were properly educated, they understood the

injustices that caused the English Parliament to pass the Habeas

Corpus Act of 1679 prohibiting the arbitrary powers that are now being

claimed for the executive branch in the US.

 

The PATRIOT Act has given the police autonomous surveillance powers.

These powers were not achieved without opposition. Civil libertarians

opposed it. Bob Barr, the former US Representative who led the

impeachment of President Clinton, fought to limit some of the worst

features of the act. But the act still bristles with unconstitutional

violations of the rights of citizens, and the newly created powers of

government to spy on citizens has brought an end to privacy.

 

The prohibition against self-incrimination protects the accused from

being tortured into confession. The innocent are no more immune to

pain than the guilty. As Stalin's show trials demonstrated, even the

most committed leaders of the Bolshevik revolution could be tortured

into confessing to be counter-revolutionaries.

 

The prohibition against torture has been breeched by the practice of

plea bargaining, which replaces jury trials with negotiated

self-incrimination, and by sentencing guidelines, which transfer

sentencing discretion from judge to prosecutor. Plea bargaining is a

form of psychological torture in which innocent and guilty alike give

up their right to jury trial in order to reduce the number and

severity of the charges that the prosecutor brings.

 

The prohibition against physical torture, however, held until the US

invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. As video, photographic, and

testimonial evidence make clear, the US military has been torturing

large numbers of people in its Iraq prisons and in its prison compound

at Guantanamo, Cuba. Most of the detainees were people picked up in

the equivalent of KGB Stalin-era street sweeps. Having no idea who the

detainees are and pressured to produce results, torture was applied to

coerce confessions.

 

Everyone is disturbed about this barbaric and illegal practice except

the Bush administration. In an amendment to a $440 billion defense

budget bill last Wednesday, the US Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban " cruel,

inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment " of anyone in US

government custody. President Bush responded to the Senate's will by

repeating his earlier threat to veto the bill. Allow me to torture,

demands Bush of the Senate, or you will be guilty of delaying the

military's budget during wartime. Bush is threatening the Senate with

blame for the deaths of US soldiers who will die because they don't

get their body armor or humvee armor in time.

 

It will be a short step from torturing detainees abroad to torturing

the accused in US jails and prisons.

 

The attorney-client privilege, another great achievement, has been

breeched by the Lynne Stewart case. As the attorney for a terrorist,

Stewart represented her client in ways disapproved by prosecutors.

Stewart was indicted, tried, and convicted of providing material

support to terrorists.

 

Stewart's indictment sends a message to attorneys not to represent too

dutifully or aggressively clients who are unpopular or demonized.

Initially, this category may be limited to terrorists. However, once

the attorney-client privilege is breeched, any attorney who gets too

much in the way of a prosecutor's case may experience retribution. The

intimidation factor can result in an attorney presenting a weak

defense. It can even result in attorneys doing as the Benthamite US

Department of Justice (sic) desires and helping to convict their client.

 

In the Anglo-American legal tradition, law is a shield of the accused.

This is necessary in order to protect the innocent. The accused is

innocent until he is proven guilty in an open court. There are no

secret tribunals, no torture, and no show trials.

 

Outside the Anglo-American legal tradition, law is a weapon of the

state. It may be used with careful restraint, as in Europe today, or

it may be used to destroy opponents or rivals as in the Soviet Union

and Nazi Germany.

 

When the protective features of the law are removed, law becomes a

weapon. Habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege, no

crime without intent, and prohibitions against torture and ex post

facto laws are the protective features that shield the accused. These

protective features are being removed by zealotry in the " war against

terrorism. "

 

The damage terrorists can inflict pales in comparison to the loss of

the civil liberties that protect us from the arbitrary power of law

used as a weapon. The loss of law as Blackstone's shield of the

innocent would be catastrophic. It would mean the end of America as a

land of liberty.

 

Dr. Roberts <paulcraigroberts is John M. Olin Fellow

at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the

Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall

Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a

former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author

of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

 

2005 Creators Syndicate