It takes a lot for me to be concerned about how Matt Hale, racist hatemonger, is being treated, but the ever talented John Ashcroft pulls it off. Carol Marin reports on the legal wrangling between Hale’s lawyers and the US Government.
Hale was arrested in January for plotting to kill a federal judge who had ruled against Hale’s organization, the World Church of the Creator, in a copyright infringement case. I’ve blogged about Hale and this case and arrest here, here, here, here, and here.
The meat of the issue concerning Hale’s access to his lawyers is contained in Marin’s article,
When lawyers Thomas A. Durkin and Patrick W. Blegen were hired by Hale’s parents to defend him, Hale’s lawyers expected to be able to talk to their client. They didn’t expect to get a memorandum signed by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft. That document is 14 pages and outlines severe restrictions called Special Administrative Measures (SAMS), not just on Hale but on them too. Not to mention media restrictions as well.
What did Ashcroft say? I wish I knew. The SAMS memo said the government, is "sensitive," so it has been sealed. That’s not all.
U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, in a letter to Durkin and Blegen, said that unless they signed a document promising to abide by the SAMS memo, they would not be permitted the privileged conversations attorneys have with their clients.
In other words, Hale’s attorneys couldn’t talk to their client to prepare his defense unless they promised to abide by government demands they considered to be indefensible. Things, they said, like not being able to tell anyone what Hale says unless it is specifically for his defense, not being able to communicate to Hale anything the government deems "inflammatory," not being able to communicate Hale’s point of view to the press.
They refused to sign.
SAMS have been around since 1996. Fitzgerald used the measures when he was in New York as a way of stopping terrorism suspects from sending "coded" messages to their disciples.
The measures have been used against convicted street gang members to prevent them from ordering hits from their prison cells.
Nobody, however, can point to SAMS being used against a pre-trial detainee in a non-terrorism case where a person is still presumed innocent until proven otherwise. Until now.
Hale is scum, but there is no excuse to deny him access to a legitimate defense.
I can’t sum it up any better than Marin did:
If Hale did in fact plot to kill a federal judge, it is undeniably an assault on the judicial system.
But cynically using the war on terrorism to compromise the Constitution is as well.