Padilla Jury Verdict Fixed

The August 16, 2007 Jose Padilla trial jury verdict has all the classic characteristics of a fixed jury verdict. Picked up in Chicago in 2002 as a “dirty bomber” suspect, Padilla was held without charges in a military brig in South Carolina for 3 ½ years until the Courts ordered him released from military custody. The government then venue shopped for a jurisdiction to conduct a criminal trial, and picked Miami, FL, home of virulent anti-Castro, pro-Bush constituents, to try him. After a 3 month trial, in which the government put on no solid evidence that Jose Padilla, and the two other defendants, did anything other than show some interest in going to Afghanistan, and read some al-Qaeda materials, the jury in Miami took only a day and a half to find each defendant guilty of 3 terrorism conspiracy charges. This, despite the facts that Padilla was tortured, permanently mentally damaged, and the defendants alleged actions caused no one to be directly harmed. Only a jury which predetermined its verdict of guilt, on 3 flimsy concocted charges, would fail to go over the mountain of evidence presented, as necessary in a fair jury deliberation, to determine whether the government had met its burden of proof to find the “presumed innocent” defendants guilty. The jury's verdict was a classic “fixed” decision, an affront to the law, the trial process, and anyone of reasonable intelligence. It was tinged with all the xenophobic racist motivations the government counted on in selecting Miami for the trial. The case will now be appealed to the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. We'll see if the Constitution has any meaning there too.