{"id":486,"date":"2004-12-20T14:04:54","date_gmt":"2004-12-20T18:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/benadida\/2004\/12\/20\/due-process-protecting-the-innocent\/"},"modified":"2004-12-20T14:04:54","modified_gmt":"2004-12-20T18:04:54","slug":"due-process-protecting-the-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/2004\/12\/20\/due-process-protecting-the-innocent\/","title":{"rendered":"Due Process = Protecting the Innocent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a203'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We are &#8220;at war,&#8221; whether we think we should be or not. A number of Americans are making decisions on that basis: that we are at war. And it is in times of war that we must be most &#8211; not least &#8211; careful about protecting civil liberties and due process, because it is in times of war that we are most vulnerable to abuses in the name of supposedly unique circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s important to remember that due process &#8211; the guarantees that the accused will have the right to a fair hearing, to a speedy trial, to face their accusers, etc&#8230; &#8211; is meant to protect the innocent. For the past 3 years, we have held hundreds of individuals prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. None ever had a fair hearing, none was given any right to even try to prove their innocence.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that this situation was unacceptable. As a result, we&#8217;re finding out that <a href=\"http:\/\/salon.com\/news\/wire\/2004\/12\/20\/detainee\/index.html\">some people really were held for years without cause<\/a>. This shouldn&#8217;t be surprising. After all, no one&#8217;s perfect, including our military and law enforcement. We all make mistakes.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s what due process is about: making room for mistakes and making sure innocent people don&#8217;t pay for these mistakes. Due process protects the innocent. If we don&#8217;t take basic measures to protect innocent people, then what, exactly, are we doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are &#8220;at war,&#8221; whether we think we should be or not. A number of Americans are making decisions on that basis: that we are at war. And it is in times of war that we must be most &#8211; not least &#8211; careful about protecting civil liberties and due process, because it is in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}