The trial of the… uh, ratings season?

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others are going to be tried in New York for the murders on 9/11.

You don’t need me to list all of the responses, they’re all over the place.

On the pro side, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was “fitting” they should face justice near where the victims were murdered.

Ordinarily I’d say yes. This isn’t an ordinary case.

Andrew McCarthy, is the former federal US prosecutor who led the case against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings. He is also the author of ‘Willful Blindness: a Memoir of the Jihad,’ which looks very good sitting on that stack of books by my bed that doesn’t seem to grow any less tall as time goes by.

(I will read it in time. Right now it’s just that I know damn well too many people are suicidally denying the reality that our civilization is at war with an implacable enemy. The book will be handy in filling in the details, but I don’t need convincing of what I can see with my own eyes.)

McCarthy said, “It’s a massively stupid decision when we’re at war with them. We have to give them all kinds of information about our methods of intelligence that can only make them more efficient at killing us.”

Worse, it’s been pointed out that in a civilian court they’ll have the protection of the Miranda decision. Which could very well mean that all confessions (boasts actually) will be thrown out – and all evidence collected later from leads provided by the waterboarded Mastermind of 9/11.

It’s a legal doctrine that goes under the poetic name of “the fruit of the poisoned tree.” Unless you can establish with a pretty high degree of certainty that the evidence would have emerged in the course of the investigation anyway, all downstream evidence collected after the first lead was illegally obtained, must be excluded.

It may not matter however. These guys are probably dying to boast of their deeds. In open court. With cameras. Broadcast to the whole world. Making them even bigger heroes back home, and perhaps martyrs.

What I haven’t seen in the media so far is this: anybody consider that juries can be intimidated?

If I were a juror, I’d like to think I’d have the huevos to defy any threats on my life.

It doesn’t work that way if the threat is to my family.

We’re about to find out what the Irish Republic has known for a long time. Trying terrorists in open court is dangerous.

Justice systems in the Western world were designed to deal with criminals, not soldiers and terrorists. The Irish tried IRA terrorists in camera. And they don’t release the names of the jurors.

But of course no trial lawyer would be sleazy enough to make sure the names of the jurors were publicly available. Heavens to Betsy surely not!

Hey, do you suppose Sheik Rahman’s lawyer Lynne Stewart is still disbarred? Perhaps she could be a consultant.