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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 21:36:43 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
From: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
Subject: EDITORIAL: Dershowitz and 9/11 torturing
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
<p>
From: "RG Boire, Esq." <<a href="mailto:rgboire@cognitiveliberty.org">rgboire@cognitiveliberty.org</a>>
To: <<a href="mailto:SiteEditor@stltoday.com">SiteEditor@stltoday.com</a>>
Subject: EDITORIAL: Dershowitz and 9/11 torturing
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 13:30:16 -0800
Organization: Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
<p>
Dear St. Louis Post -
<p>
I am an attorney and the Executive Director of the nonprofit Center for
Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. I hereby submit the following editorial for
publication. My comments are in response to your article "U.S. Now Might
Have to Consider What Once Was Unthinkable, Dershowitz Says" by Tina Hesman,
11/04/2001.
<p>
I hope you will publish my response to Professor Dershowitz. If you would
like to contact me, I can be reached via e-mail to <a href="mailto:rgboire@cognitiveliberty">rgboire@cognitiveliberty</a>
or by telephone to 530-750-7912.
<p>
Scroll down for my editorial.
<p>
Sincerely,
-Richard Glen Boire, Esq.
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
231 G. Street, # 7
Davis, CA 95617-3481 USA
<p>
EDITORIAL SUBMISSION TO THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
<p>
RE: "U.S. Now Might Have to Consider What Once Was Unthinkable, Dershowitz
Says" by Tina Hesman, 11/04/2001, St Louis Post-Dispatch
<p>
I was alarmed to read that along with the FBI, Professor Alan Dershowitz of
Harvard Law School thinks it may be appropriate to use forced drugging and
even torture to make 9/11 detainees talk with the police.
<p>
Although he is a professor of law at one of the country's most prestigious
law schools, Professor Dershowitz needs to reread the US Constitution and
spend some time examining the host of international treaties that strictly
forbid such barbaric acts as torturing detainees and/or injecting them with
mind-altering drugs.
<p>
Professor Dershowitz suggestion that the country create a new type of
warrant, known as a "torture warrant," is preposterous on its face.
<p>
I can scarcely think of a legal proposition that is more fundamental to our
democratic system than the presumption of innocence - a presumption that is
grossly violated when the police are permitted to torture and drug suspects.
For good reasons, our system does not permit judges to impose torture as
punishment after conviction of a crime, and our system certainly should not
sanction the use of torture or forced drugging against people who have
simply been detained by police.
<p>
The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that no person "shall
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," and
protects all people on US soil, whether citizens or not. Torturing a person,
or pumping them with drugs, in order to extract a confession is inherently
coercive, and renders any subsequent statements "compelled," involuntary,
unreliable, and wholly unconstitutional.
<p>
An absolute bar on government-imposed torture and drugging exists worldwide
and is codified in numerous international treaties. Article 5 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 7 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both provide that no one shall be
subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment.
<p>
Likewise the International Convention against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention Against Torture),
prohibits "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.."
<p>
Further, when the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, we
expressly acknowledged that "torture" includes "the administration or
application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering
substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses
or the personality."
<p>
While chastising the government's tapping of phones to enforce Alcohol
Prohibition laws, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed: "Experience
should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the
Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally
alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well
meaning but without understanding." (Olmstead v. United States (1928) 277
U.S. 438.)
<p>
In our rush to bring the 9/11 attackers to justice, let's remember and
respect the fundamental values that distinguish the United States from rogue
terrorist groups. In our efforts to secure the homeland, let's not copy the
terror techniques of our attackers.
<p>
--Richard Glen Boire, Esq.
Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
<p>
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Arizona Secular Humanists
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Interesting, funny but otherwise useless news!
Libertarians talk about freedom