"I don't know what article of the Constitution that would contravene."

That was Justice Scalia discussing torture in order to find out where the ticking nuclear bomb was. From the AP:

"Listen, I think it's very facile for people to say, `Oh, torture is terrible.' You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it's an easy question? You think it's clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?" Scalia said.

Scalia also said that while there are U.S. laws against torture, nothing in the Constitution appears to prohibit harsh treatment of suspected terrorists. "I don't know what article of the Constitution that would contravene," he said. Scalia spent a college semester in Switzerland at the University of Fribourg.

The 30-minute interview touched on a range of topics, including the financing of political campaigns, the death penalty and gay marriage, about which Scalia said he should not comment because it is likely the court soon will have the issue before it. Asked about money and U.S. elections, Scalia scoffed that "women may pay more each year to buy cosmetics" than is spent on local, state and federal elections combined.

His comments about interrogation techniques echoed remarks he also has made to foreign audiences. In 2008, he used the example of the hidden bomb. "It seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say you couldn't, I don't know, stick something under the fingernail, smack him in the face. It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," he said.

A year earlier, Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper reported that Scalia invoked fictional TV counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer using torture to get terrorism suspects to reveal information that could help authorities foil an imminent attack.

"Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so," he said. "So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."

In January, Scalia seemed less concerned about the safety of residents of Los Angeles when the court heard arguments about whether anonymous tips could justify a traffic stop. Urging the lawyer for two suspects appealing their conviction to stand firm, Scalia suggested that not even information that a carload of terrorists heading to Los Angeles with an atomic bomb would be enough to justify police stopping the car, if the tip came from an anonymous source.

"I want you to say, `Let the car go. Bye-bye, LA,'" Scalia said.

Meantime, friends of the Blog, Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman have come out with their new movie -- The U Part 2.  Gotta love it:

Zacarias Moussaoui asks Judge King to send him to Guantanamo

From Curt Anderson:

An imprisoned man known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks asked a South Florida federal judge Wednesday for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where several alleged senior terror plotters are awaiting trial.
The request is part of two rambling, handwritten letters filed in Miami federal court by Zacarias Moussaoui. He is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Moussaoui signed one letter as the "so-call 20th hijacker" and a "Slave to Allah."
Moussaoui, 46, has been writing letters to courts around the country from his maximum-security prison cell in Florence, Colorado, claiming inside knowledge about al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 plot, and seeking a chance to testify in lawsuits filed by terrorism victims.
The letters filed in Miami repeat some of those claims. Moussaoui wants the transfer to Guantanamo, he says, because he has been assaulted and harassed by other inmates and guards at the Florence "Supermax" prison — including Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
He even contends there was a prison plot to kill him and "claim that I committed suicide," but that failed.
"So no suicide, Victory by Allah," Moussaoui wrote.
U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke said the agency could not comment on the allegations.
Five detainees at Guantanamo are awaiting trial before a military commission in the 9/11 attacks, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as well as the alleged orchestrator of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri.
Moussaoui also makes other demands, asking Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King to order prison doctors to perform a long-delayed hernia operation and that he appoint civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump and Anthony Gray to represent him. Crump and Gray recently represented the family of Michael Brown in the Ferguson police shooting.
"I am currently on a hunger strike in order to have a lawyer since 11/09/14," Moussaoui wrote.

RIP Dollree Mapp

From the NY Times:

On May 23, 1957, three police officers arrived at a house in Cleveland and demanded to enter. They wanted to question a man about a recent bombing and believed he was hiding inside. A woman who lived there, Dollree Mapp, refused to admit them.

It was a small gesture of defiance that led to a landmark United States Supreme Court ruling on the limits of police power.

Ms. Mapp told the officers that she wanted to see a search warrant. They did not produce one. A few hours later, more officers arrived and forced their way into the house. Ms. Mapp called her lawyer and again asked to see a warrant. When one officer held up a piece of paper that he said was a warrant, Ms. Mapp snatched it and stuffed it into her blouse. The officer reached inside her clothing and snatched it back.

The officers handcuffed Ms. Mapp — they called her “belligerent” — and then searched her bedroom, where they paged through a photo album and personal papers. They also searched her young daughter’s room, the kitchen, a dining area and the basement.

They did not find the man they were looking for, but they did find what they said were sexually explicit materials — books and drawings that Ms. Mapp said had belonged to a previous boarder — and they arrested Ms. Mapp.

Four years later, after Ms. Mapp had been sentenced to prison on obscenity charges and after her conviction had been upheld on appeal, the Supreme Court took up the case, ostensibly because of questions it raised about obscenity and the First Amendment.

But when the justices ruled, in June 1961, their decision dwelled, with far more significant consequences, on the role of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure. Prosecutors had never produced the supposed warrant brandished by the Cleveland police or proved that it had existed.

The court ruled, 6 to 3, that Ms. Mapp’s conviction should be thrown out, and that all state courts must suppress evidence gathered through police misconduct in certain kinds of cases.

"He’d have had a fairer shake in a tribunal run by marsupials."

Ouch.  That was Judge Kozinski dissenting in Alvarez v. Tracy:

When we take the judicial oath of office, we swear to
“administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal
right to the poor and to the rich . . . .” 28 U.S.C. § 453. I
understand this to mean that we must not merely be impartial,
but must appear to be impartial to a disinterested observer.
Today we do not live up to this solemn responsibility.
Relying on a ground not raised by either party here or in the
district court, we refuse to consider petitioner’s serious and,
in my opinion, meritorious claims. This is only the latest
indignity inflicted on a criminal defendant who, despite
having a seventh-grade education, was forced to defend
himself at trial; although having the right to a jury, was never
told that he had to ask for one; and who was therefore
convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison in a bench
trial where neither the prosecution nor the judge lifted a
finger to bring the accusing witness into court. He’d have
had a fairer shake in a tribunal run by marsupials.
I am troubled by the disparate way we treat the parties.
Alvarez and the Community both failed to raise legal issues
at the proper time and in the proper manner. Alvarez failed
to raise his jury trial and confrontation claims by way of a
direct appeal within the tribal court; the Community failed to
raise an exhaustion defense in district court. The Community
committed an additional default by also failing to raise this
issue on appeal—something we’ve repeatedly held is an
independently sufficient basis for declining to address it.

I also like this passage:

I have read the opinion many times and disagree with
pretty much everything in it, including the numerals and
punctuation. I explain why in the pages that follow, but first
I pose a more basic question: How can a court committed to
justice, as our court surely is, reach a result in which the
litigant who can afford a lawyer is forgiven its multiple
defaults while the poor, uneducated, un-counseled petitioner
has his feet held to the fire? I attribute no ill will or improper
motive to my excellent colleagues. They are fair, honorable
and dedicated jurists who are doing what they earnestly
believe is right. But we see the world very differently. See,
e.g., United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 617 F.3d 1120, 1123
(9th Cir. 2010) (Kozinski, C.J., dissenting from denial of
rehearing en banc). I can find no justification for showing
such solicitude for the overdog while giving the underdog the
back of the hand.

“What about the language at pages 54 to 55 of the Petitioner’s brief? You know, ‘Dada make a nice bed for mommy at the bottom of the lake’”

That was Chief Judge Roberts last week during the oral argument on the Facebook case....