About Those Regency Law Schools Grads

You would think that there would be a few competent lawyers to prevent errors like this. This is the sort of thing that cost junior assistant district attorneys their first cases.

The Associated Press is reporting – Charges dropped for two Guantanamo detainees:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Military judges dismissed charges Monday against a Guantanamo detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden and another who allegedly killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, marking a setback to Washington’s attempts to try detainees in military court.

In back-to-back arraignments for Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, of Yemen, the U.S. military’s cases against the alleged al Qaeda figures dissolved because, the two judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction.

…

The new Military Commissions Act, written to establish military trials after the U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected the previous system, is full of problems, defense attorneys argued.

The judges agreed that there was one problem they could not resolve — the new legislation says only “unlawful enemy combatants” can be tried by the military trials, known as commissions. But Khadr and Hamdan had previously been identified by military panels only as enemy combatants, lacking the critical “unlawful” designation.

…

Prosecuting attorneys in both cases indicated they would appeal the dismissals. But the court designated to hear the appeals — known as the court of military commissions review — doesn’t even exist yet, [Marine Colonel Dwight] Sullivan noted.

This is basic stuff, folks. The definitions matter in court. Typos are not accepted in felony cases, and the people who wrote this law, all part of the Shrubbery’s Hedgemony, should have caught this. The military judges are not going to let egregious errors like this pass.