Gregory Fox, Wayne Law professor and director of the Program for International Legal Studies (right), welcomed Seton Hall law professor Ken Denbeaux during his recent visit to Detroit. Denebeaux is co-editor of “The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law.”
By John Minnis
Legal News
Allowing an exception to Miranda for terrorism suspects has unseen consequences and may end up corrupting U.S. values, according to Ken Denbeaux, co-editor of “The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law.”
Denbeaux is one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members and director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research.
He addressed Wayne State University Law School students and faculty recently as part of the 2010 fall speaker series sponsored by Wayne Law’s Program for International Legal Studies.
His discussion was titled, “Miranda Rights for Terrorist Suspects?”
“I’m very glad to welcome Mark Denbeaux today,” said Gregory Fox, Wayne Law professor and director of the Program for International Legal Studies. “Mark is best known for his series of reports on detainees at Guantanamo. He used the government’s own information on Guantanamo and found a vast majority of people there had nothing to do with al Qaida or terrorism.”
The Seton Hall Law School professor co-authored an internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
The series began with the “Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees Through Analysis of Department of Defense Data,” which has been followed by four additional studies since 2006.
The reports refute many government claims about the detainees, revealing, for example, that 92 percent of the original prisoners had not been al Qaida fighters and only 5 percent had been captured by the United States.
Denbeaux has also represented several detainees in habeas corpus proceedings before federal courts.
Denbeaux previously served as a senior litigation attorney for Community Action for Legal Services of New York City, and also has chaired the board of New York City Legal Services Program. He has served on the Seton Hall faculty since 1972.
“The only law I’m certain of,” the Seton Hall professor told students and faculty in reference to allowing a Miranda exception for terrorism suspects, “is the law of uncertainty. There are always unintended consequences in change.”
He explained that there are several models of information gathering — law enforcement, military and national security — all with different goals.
Law enforcement investigators seek evidence that will stand up in court. Military intelligence is only interested in “what’s over the next hill.” National security interests are much more murky.
“I think most people advocate a national security exception,” Denbeaux said.
He pointed out that even before Miranda, harsh interrogation tactics, such as physical brutality and threat of brutality, were illegal and still would be illegal even under a Miranda exception.
Denbeaux said many forms of “torture” are forms of sleep deprivation. Detainees are killed by interrogators trying to keep their subjects awake.
“All these things they’re doing were found unconstitutional before Miranda,” he said. “I think that even though they may not count as torture, they were found to be unconstitutional in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. A 48-hour exception for Miranda won’t usher in abuse. They (harsh interrogation tactics) are already illegal.”
The Guantanamo expert explained that following 9/11, thousands of people were rounded up and locked up in Guantanamo in order to prove we were “winning the war on terror.”
“It’s truly horrific,” Denbeaux said. “Guantanamo is a horrible disaster. It is a giant ‘perp walk.’”
The problem he and his students found was that none of the detainees was a “big guy,” a leader, a mastermind.
“There may be bad guys there,” Denbeaux said, “but if these guys are the worst of the worst, we can end all airport security. These guys are losers.”
Now the United States is trying to find countries that will take in these detainees who have been taken from their homes, imprisoned, tortured and never charged with a crime.
“It’s a public relations disaster,” Denbeaux said, “a public relations stunt gone bad.”
He pointed out that in 1996, the FBI in New York decided to go after al Qaida and Osama bin Laden as organized crime.
“What a lot of people don’t know,” Denbeaux said, “is they were highly successful, and the system worked. We have to do what we did with the mob. Get informants. Get information.”
He pointed out that Miranda is more than just a statement rattled off to suspects. It is a “system of values.”
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