ACLU Unveils

[WSJ_law_blog]

Here’s a just-in dispatch from the Journal’s Supreme Court reporter, Jess Bravin, re a new “dream team” of capital defense attorneys to represent Gitmo detainees.

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The Bush administration raised the stakes at Guantanamo when it announced plans to seek the death penalty against a half dozen defendants, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 conspirators. Now the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers are responding by putting together what they call a “dream team” of capital defense attorneys to represent the so-called high value detainees.

“We take this step because we simply cannot stand by and allow the Bush administration’s military commissions to make a mockery of our Constitution and our values,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero says in a statement.

Government lawyers have argued at Guantanamo hearings that the defendants have no constitutional rights. Even so, the proceedings will provide “a fair trial consistent with American standards of justice,” Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the legal adviser to the commissions administrator, said this week.

Here are some of the lawyers stepping up to represent defendants:

• Joshua Dratel (Worked on 2001 embassy bombing trial; represented David Hicks at Guantanamo.)
• Thomas Anthony Durkin
• Nina Ginsberg
• Nancy Hollander (Represented Guantanamo detainee Mohamedou Slahi.)
• Denny LeBoeuf
• Amanda Lee
• Scott McKay
• Edward McMahon (Represented convicted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in federal district court.)
• David Nevin (Represented a Ruby Ridge defendant; also Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi student in Idaho acquitted of terrorism charges.)
• Jeff Robinson
• Gary Sowards

Here’s the Pentagon’s statement announcing charges against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused in the 1998 embassy bombings.

And here’s Jess Bravin’s full story.