better-dead-than-fed
06-09-2013, 12:12 AM
On 2013-May-29, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. citizens may be convicted of crimes without public trials. The ruling gives a green light for a practice previously decried by the U.S. Supreme Court as a “menace to liberty”:
The traditional Anglo-American distrust for secret trials has been variously ascribed to the notorious use of this practice by the Spanish Inquisition, to the excesses of the English Court of Star Chamber, and to the French monarchy's abuse of the lettre de cachet. All of these institutions obviously symbolized a menace to liberty. In the hands of despotic groups each of them had become an instrument for the suppression of political and religious heresies in ruthless disregard of the right of an accused to a fair trial.
When I had attempted to defend myself as a defendant in the U.S. District Court, the presiding judge had sealed records to hide my defense from public view. I had appealed (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5ZYXb_HdIQhZEVCb1YxRGNrblE/edit?usp=sharing) to the Ninth Circuit when they denied (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5ZYXb_HdIQhbERXZ0lNcFRuYXc/edit?usp=sharing) the appeal without explanation.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JFSkPJzDmRZSJSXRsSCuu7C6ArR-5sOCgbziZKA5ZR0/pub
The traditional Anglo-American distrust for secret trials has been variously ascribed to the notorious use of this practice by the Spanish Inquisition, to the excesses of the English Court of Star Chamber, and to the French monarchy's abuse of the lettre de cachet. All of these institutions obviously symbolized a menace to liberty. In the hands of despotic groups each of them had become an instrument for the suppression of political and religious heresies in ruthless disregard of the right of an accused to a fair trial.
When I had attempted to defend myself as a defendant in the U.S. District Court, the presiding judge had sealed records to hide my defense from public view. I had appealed (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5ZYXb_HdIQhZEVCb1YxRGNrblE/edit?usp=sharing) to the Ninth Circuit when they denied (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5ZYXb_HdIQhbERXZ0lNcFRuYXc/edit?usp=sharing) the appeal without explanation.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JFSkPJzDmRZSJSXRsSCuu7C6ArR-5sOCgbziZKA5ZR0/pub