A Stitch in Haste

My vision of Hell is being falsely accused of a serious crime and being offered a plea bargain to a lesser offense.

It's easy to insist, in armchair-quarterback fashion, that you would never, ever, accept a plea for a crime you didn't commit -- that principles always trump pragmatics. Especially when you are typically required, as a part of a plea bargain, to admit in court, publicly and under oath, that you are in fact guilty and to describe, in detail, how you committed your crime. I'd rather be defecated upon.

But prison is an ominous -- in some cases lethal -- proposition. It is not irrational to conclude that anything -- anything -- is better than prison.

And the only thing worse than prison is Guantánamo:

[David] Hicks is the first to be charged under the tribunals which have been revived by Congress after the previous system, created by President George W. Bush, was declared illegal by the US Supreme Court.

And Hicks is now the first to plead guilty, an outcome that the US administration will see as something of a victory.

But Hicks's plea, coming after more than five years in detention and after more serious charges were dropped, may only bolster criticism that the tribunal process and the Guantanamo camp represent a "law-free zone" that breaches fundamental human rights.
...
While the Bush administration has called the detainees at Guantanamo the "worst of the worst," even prosecutors did not portray Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner, as a big fish or "high value" suspect.

Remember, Guantanamo is such a terrible experience that, when coupled with the possibility, if not probability, of spending the rest of your life there, several detainees have been driven to suicide. The only thing worse than a nightmare is a nightmare that may never end.

Is Hicks guilty of -- something? Quite possibly. So his reality-based nightmare is not quite the same as my hypothetical one. But it's still a nightmare that he almost certainly did not deserve.

And he's one of the lucky ones.

Previous post on Hicks here.

More thoughts from Outside the Beltway:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "confessions" have been widely disregarded worldwide, since everyone is pretty sure that he was tortured. Hicks' confession will likely be treated with the same level of skepticism. If their confessions are true, then worldwide skepticism of those confessions is only going to hamper counterterrorist measures and bolster the strength of our enemies.

PoliBlog:

While it is likely that Hicks is guilty, the fact that it has taken this long to get to this point, coupled with the ongoing serious controversy about Guantánamo and detainees in general, has cast a serious shadow on whatever outcomes the system produces.

Balkinization:

The brilliance of Hicks' plea is that rather than spending months of additional Guantánamo incarceration contesting this point before a tribunal biased against him, he can quickly pursue his claim in U.S. and Australian civilian courts more committed to the rule of law.

ACSblog:

Chief Prosecutor Col. Davis was more willing to speculate about what a plea deal might include than the defense. He said at last night's press conference (I'm paraphrasing) that if he were a betting man, the odds were that Hicks could be in Australia by the end of the year.

Maybe Guantánamo isn't Hell after all. Maybe it's only Purgatory.