New York Times Investigators Explore Boundaries of Everything the Law Allows By WILLIAM GLABERSON Law
enforcement officials have extensive powers to detain people when
investigating attacks on the country, legal experts said
yesterday. The experts said the detentions in recent days of more than two
dozen people on charges of immigration violations and six as
material witnesses in Tuesday's terrorist attacks, showed that
officials were using that wide latitude. They are unlikely to be second- guessed by judges, several legal
experts said. "No judge wants to be responsible for another act of
terrorism," said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, president of the Brennan
Center for Justice at New York University Law School. Because the government controls who can enter the country, the
powers of officials are especially expansive in dealing with
immigrants. Judges in the past have permitted immigrants to be held
on evidence kept secret even from the courts. "We don't have preventive detention in our law for acts of
terrorism," said Arthur C. Helton, an expert on immigration law who
is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That's why
all these people are being held on immigration violations, because
the discretion enjoyed by immigration officials is almost
complete." The United States Supreme Court has approved holding people in
immigration cases, even as a pretext to pursue leads to other
crimes. Although not as expansive, the power of prosecutors over people
defined as material witnesses is also very broad. Officials
generally must obtain permission from a judge to hold someone as a
material witness. But lawyers say the anxieties across the country suggest that
judges would be sympathetic to assertions of law enforcement
officials. "It is highly unlikely under these circumstances that a
judge would refuse to sign a warrant," said Thomas P. Puccio, a
former federal prosecutor. Under federal law, a person can be held as a material witness if
there is probable cause to believe the person has information that
could be important to an investigation and if it "is or may become
impracticable" to assure that the person will be available to
testify. Defining people as material witnesses could be a short cut to
detain people, said Aaron R. Marcu, a former federal prosecutor who
is a defense lawyer at the law firm Covington & Burling. He said
it would be much easier to show that a person had information than
it would be to show that there was reason to believe the person was
involved in the terror conspiracy. And because there are international terror networks, it would not
be difficult for prosecutors to assert that witnesses might flee,
said Frederick P. Hafetz, another former federal prosecutor who is a
defense lawyer in New York. Copyright © 2001. New York Times Company. All rights reserved. saved from url:http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/17/national/17CIVI.html
September 17, 2001
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
