Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern: Deterring Torture Through the Law

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Deterring Torture Through the Law
By Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern
December 23rd, 2008


"First, let's kill all the lawyers" may have made sense in that Shakespearean scene, but there is a far simpler solution to the legal ambiguities regarding what to do now about the torture approved by President George W. Bush. We suggest this variant: First, let's have the lawyers review their notes from Criminal Justice 101.

The professor whom Coleen Rowley had for that course at the University of Iowa was the consummate curmudgeon. He kept repeating himself. It is now clear why. The old fellow hammered home the basic purposes of the criminal justice system and the various kinds and degrees of criminal intent. For Rowley, 24 years as a FBI special agent and attorney helped make it all real.

Eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration have served to make the matter of criminal intent the first essay question on the final exam for Criminal Justice 101, so to speak. But obfuscation (much of it deliberate) reigns; worst of all, it impedes the important task of seeking accountability for those responsible for torture.

Criminal intent comes in essentially three kinds: No one needs much help understanding the "deliberate-premeditated-cold blooded" first-degree intent, because that's the stuff of the movies--the perfect murder scheme or elaborate plot to pull off the heist of the century. "Second-degree intent" is also easy to grasp. It is the usual label for what prompts people to commit unplanned crimes in the heat of passion, for example.

It was to that third type of guilty intent—"recklessness"—that the old law professor devoted most emphasis, using his favorite "Russian Roulette" hypothetical to distinguish it from the first two types and from mere negligence. His words still ring: "One cannot simply put a gun on a table knowing there is a bullet in the cylinder, spin the cylinder, point it at a person, pull the trigger and then say (when it goes off), ‘It's not my fault, because I was hoping it would spin to one of the empty chambers.'" ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/progressive-opinion/2008125223/deterring-torture-through-law