Can a National Disgrace be Rectified?
By ELAINE CASSEL Jose Padilla is the first American citizen to be designated an “enemy combatant.” His detention without charge lasted a shocking three-and-a-half years. Although the government dropped its initial claim that Padilla had conspired to create a “dirty bomb,” it recently procured from a Miami, Florida federal jury a conviction of Padilla on other terrorism charges. On January 4, there was another development in Padilla’s story. In the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, attorneys working with the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School filed a novel civil action on behalf of Padilla against a former Bush Administration official and current Boalt Hall law professor, John Yoo. (Yoo is, ironically, a Yale Law School graduate.) In this column, I will discuss that suit and its chances of success. The Tortured History of a Tortured American Arrested in Chicago on May 2, 2002, Padilla was initially detained in a Manhattan jail, ost
