It also proposes that the judge could hold court on any day of the 2018 calendar with the exception of Christmas and the post-Ramadan Eid week — adding that in a real crunch six of those holiday weeks’ days could be used, too.
And, to assuage Pohl’s concern about the dignity of the proceedings, taxing the Top Secret subset of the 1,500-staff prison’s guard force and other logistics, the prosecutors offer the judge a single-page “scheduling sequence” to let him end each court day by 7 p.m.
It is blacked out in the document that was released Wednesday night to the public.
LM OTERO ASSOCIATED PRESS
The prosecutors clearly don’t agree with Pohl’s assessment that night court is inappropriate.
They offer a plan of action “without conceding that military justice proceedings occurring beyond hours of daylight would be disorderly or otherwise lack the seriousness and sobriety that participants are professionally obligated to maintain.”
“What matters most about a legal system is not the grandeur of the physical surroundings or the trappings of the courthouse,” they write, “but rather the wisdom of the court and the quality of its justice.”
“Austere locations are nothing new to American civilian judges, advocates, and juries, nor to military practitioners,” they advise Pohl, currently the longest-serving judge in the U.S. military — who has held court-martial cases in overseas battlefield conditions, including in tents.
Pohl’s predecessor, in fact, once arraigned a war court defendant in shadowy light at the national security court because the power at the Expeditionary Legal Compound and other technology failed on its 2008 debut.
“This venue’s limitation and modest characteristics impose legitimate constraints without compromising justice,” they write of remote, 45-square-mile Navy base whose prison commander recently canceled separate bay transit for the judges who insist on segregation and whose base commander at one point canceled all war court guest quarters accommodations for a 9/11 hearing, with the exception of townhouses for Sept. 11 victim family members.
Article Appeared @http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article169047262.html