Politics: Mike Hawash

I've written here that Mike Hawash was done an injustice. I don't know for sure that this is true, because Hawash pled guilty to helping the Taliban yesterday, according to the Washington Post.

Of course, we know from the experiences of blacks in Tulia, Texas and the experience of the Lackawanna Six that Mike Hawash could have been looking at 10 years with a plea or life in a brig as an enemy combatant. As the Christian Science Monitor item cited above states:

But prosecutors used dubious tactics to force the men into a plea-bargain admitting guilt to lesser charges. According to The Wall Street Journal, they threatened the defendants with "enemy combatant" status - meaning they could have been turned over to the military, deprived of counsel, and held incommunicado indefinitely.

In other words, the government said, convict yourself or we will strip you of your rights and you can rot in jail. That doesn't sound like respect for due process and trial by jury.

Prosecutors also threatened to bring treason charges that carry the death penalty. That's hardball, but within bounds, since the defendants would have a lawyer and a jury trial.

Many of the incarcerated victims of Tulia's one-man drug sting pled guilty after earlier defendants received outlandish sentences, including several 99-year stints handed out in drug trials with no drugs or cash in evidence. The sales power of a shorter stay in prison -- or in the case of the Lackawanna Six, not being killed on a firing range, or whatever they plan on doing to Jose Padilla -- cannot be overstated.

So maybe Mike Hawash is guilty, but I can't look at these hearings, plea-bargains and trials -- or the upcoming trials of the Northern Virginia men released without bail because, according to the presiding judge, the government's case "doesn't hold water" -- and think that anything about this could be described as "fair."