06-12-2013, 01:16 AM
BjornF16 Wrote:Depends…not if you are an alien captured outside of US territory and brought into the US for justice. See United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ge...4&page=259
Let's not confuse legalisms with what is right. Even Red China (Are we there yet?) has its legalisms.
If you want to play at legalisms, the key word in my statement is "in."—"In a constitutional republic, even suspected terrorists have the same rights as free men."
Verdugo-Urquidez was not in the U.S. He was in Mexico.
If you wanted to argue that the USA is not a constitutional republic, but a sham, I'd accept that argument.
Indeed by pilpul, the Marvelettes.... er... Supremes contrived a legalism to nullify the Fourth Amendment in the case of Verdugo-Urquidez, just as they have contrived legalisms to make theft-by-government and death-by-government "legal." In the case of theft-by-government (asset forfeiture) the fiction is that the government is not prosecuting the owner, but prosecuting the property and the property has no rights, so the property can be seized and forfeited without any meaningful due process or recourse.
The pilpul coming out of the US legalism system is expectedly absurd and self-serving, bearing no relation to what is right.