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Monday, January 17, 2011

The Obvious Question About Moving The Loughner Trial

Mea Culpa:  This happens sometimes.  The post below was wrong as originally drafted, as pointed out by a reader, because it is court officials, not the Justice Department, who want to move the trial.  Gulp.

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The Justice Department Federal court officials want to move the trial of Jared Loughner from Tucson to San Diego because Loughner cannot get a fair trial due to pretrial publicity and the sensitivity of the case in Arizona, as reported by The Washington Post:
Federal authorities are planning to move the trial of the alleged gunman in the Jan. 8 mass shooting in Tucson to San Diego because of extensive pretrial publicity in Arizona, federal law enforcement sources said Sunday night.

Jared Lee Loughner, 22, is charged in federal court in Arizona, but court officials plan to move the case out of the state within several weeks, the sources said. They cited publicity and the sensitivity of the case in Arizona, where one of those fatally shot was John M. Roll, the state's chief federal judge.
Which leads to the obvious question:
If the murder of several people in a high profile case requires that the trial of Jared Loughner be moved out of the State of Arizona, how is it that the Justice Department insisted for so long that the trial of Kalid Sheikh Mohammed take place in the shadow of the former World Trade Center?
For the sake of intellectual consistency, shouldn't Eric Holder be trying to prove that our justice system can handle a high-profile, politicized trial of a mass murderer in Tucson where the crime took place?

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8 comments:

  1. I do think that any trial should take place on the defendant's home planet, which presents problems in Loughner's case.

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  2. I don't remember where I heard this but I thought the trial was being moved because all the Tucson judges had recused themselves due to familiarity with Judge Roll.

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  3. Your question presupposes of course that Holder and his DOJ are actually thinking through what they do and say.Remember when the political winds changed last year and he talked about curtailing certain aspects of Miranda for terrorism suspects? This is political pure and simple. Also why hasn't the Mohammed trial proceeded in NYC? Could it be because of extreme vocal opposition right before the beginning of a Presidential campaign?

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  4. The obvious answer: Since when has intellectual honesty and consistency been part of the far-left progressive mindset? Sweeping generalization comments like the one I just made aside, how many times do comments and actions of progressive liberals completely change for the opposite based upon which "side" of the political spectrum is under scrutiny.

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  5. Mr. Jacobson: You omitted an important word in your re-posting of the first paragraph of the Post article: "court." It is not the DoJ that wants to move the trial, according to the article it is federal COURT officials. The article actually states that DoJ prosecutors do not want to move the trial.

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  6. Intellectual consistency is a racist, bourgeois construct to hold down the masses. As are Cheetos.

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  7. I too was under the impression that the trial would need to be moved because all Arizona judges reported to the judge that was killed.

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  8. Wouldn't this advocating for a different jurisdiction to hold the trial be the job of the defense lawyers? Not the court officials? Seems a bit odd.

    ReplyDelete