Strange Bedfellows.

Kim du Toit has a point (or, to complete the rhyme, perhaps it's a "poit"):

Longtime Readers of this website will be familiar with the queasiness with which I greeted passage of the various anti-terrorist laws, and most especially the Patriot Act.

My reasoning then, as now, was that laws meant to squash Islamist assholes intent on blowing up the George Washington Bridge would, sooner or later, be applied against people not remotely connected with actual terrorism as we know it. Call it the "RICO Effect", whereby, for instance, laws passed to deal with Al Capone and his ilk ended up being used against anti-abortion groups. 

And, now, we have gang members being prosecuted as terrorists:

Morales, 22, was indicted on murder and other charges as acts of terror in May, along with 18 other members of the St. James Boys Gang, a Mexican and Mexican-American street gang.

Morales faces the most serious charge of second-degree murder as a terrorist act. A New York grand jury returned the charges against him in connection with the shooting death of 10-year-old Melanie Mendez, who died from gunshot wounds two years earlier.

Pass for the moment whether Morales is bad guy, or whether deserves to be punished if convicted of murdering Melanie Mendez.  Murder, after all, was just as illegal before 9-11 as it is illegal today.  The question is whether this is the kind of crime that an anti-Terrorism statute is meant to address.  Should Morales be subject to the penalties that the law intended for folks who help others to fly jetliners into office buildings?   If so, why?  And why shouldn't he have been subject to those same penalties prior to 9-11?  Did 9-11 really change everything, as some are fond of saying?

I'm not suggesting an ultimate answer, here -- I'm far too wishy-washy for that -- but I do think that du Toit has a point.  Nearly every broadly-worded statute has the potential to be read in a way that exceeds or defeats its intent. 

In a legal system based on zealous advocacy, it is seldom a question of whether you should read a statute to reach a desired end.  (Here, the end is presumably sentence enhancement.) The question generally is, can you read a statute to reach that end.  And, if you can, you do.

[Note:  The "RICO effect" exists, but it is not exactly as du Toit describes.  RICO's peculiar evil -- or genius, take your pick -- was to allow private parties to sue for treble damages in a civil RICO action.  A treble damages claim is an awfully tempting pot 'o gold, and thus has induced a bunch of ill-fitting rainbow chasin' plaintiffs' attorneys and activists, including those who brought the anti-abortion cases.  Criminal RICO cases, on the other hand, have generally -- though not universally -- been more restrained, targeting mafia or mafia-like behavior (e.g., street gangs), or wide spread fraud.]

Comments

[Anders Widebrant]

Police forces battling street gangs has already been cited as a new front in fourth generation warfare. Charging gang members as terrorists is not entirely without merit, if they employ terrorist tactics. However, I have no idea whether Mr Morales's case is an appropriate use of the legislation, or if the legislation itself is at all sane.

Anti-terrorism legislation should focus on acts of terrorism, or conspiracy to commit such acts, and deal out punishments appropriate to the severity of the act. There should be no difference in sentencing between 'murder' and 'terrorist murder', although the latter suspect could well be charged with a separate act of terrorism, if he was attempting to spread terror and disrupt society.

In other words, we shouldn't fall into the fallacy of making one set of laws for little brown men flying into our skyscrapers and something else for the rest of us. If terrorist suspects are equal to other suspects in a court of law, we don't have to worry much about anti-terrorism legislation being used against gang members. If their repertoire included what amounts to acts of terrorism, they should be punished appropriately.

[Anders Widebrant]

Shit. I have to point out that much as I'm impressed with Lind's views on war, I really disagree with his ideas about immigration from my link above.

[Edward]

When it gets down to where this is used to prosecute frat house hazings gone awry, maybe then folks will understand the Pandora's box this has opened.

Nongang members are next, you can bet on it. Arsonists seem a likely target.

[tomsyl]

Is there a root philosophical difference between the treatment of Morales and prosecution of defendants under "hate crime" statutes? The latter equally involves sentence enhancement based on a politically incorrect perceived state of mind when the crime is committed.

Agree completely with von's summary of how civil RICO went awry. Almost as if it were conceived by the plaintiffs' trial bar.

[tomsyl]

Anders, interesting that Lind begins his diatribe with the words "According to people who have been there . . .", meaning he's never even been to Fallujah. Sniping at the US military from afar via second- and third-hand sources has been an MSM pastime for years, and hasn't gained any credibility with the passage of time.

[Jadegold]

Kim du Toit never, ever has a point worth consideration by rational human beings.

You see, duToit is pretty much in favor of stepping all over the civil rights of people he doesn't like such as "Islamists" and various African-American groups and organizaions.

What he doesn't like is the fact certain pro-gun/paramilitary groups would also fall under this umbrella.

Dave Neiwert has written about how little attention is paid to homegrown groups that flirt with or actively engage in domestic terrorism.

[von]

Almost as if it were conceived by the plaintiffs' trial bar.

Heh.

Incidentally, I had Judge Mikva as a mediator in a RICO case a bit back. Mediations tend to be fairly law-free events (as I'm sure you know), so we weren't expecting an extensive back and forth on the peculiarities of the RICO Act. But we were expecting a little back and forth. Instead, what we got was a single statement from the former Congressman from Chicago, accompanied by a wave of the hand:

"Don't talk to me about RICO. I was there when it passed."

I can honestly say that we didn't talk about the law of RICO for the rest of the day.

[cleek]

Arsonists seem a likely target

as do political protestors.

i don't see any mention of "intent to kill" in the USA PATRIOT's definition of 'domestice terrorism'; so anyone who kills (or even harms) someone else during a political protest that gets out of hand would seem to me to meet the requirements.

here in the fine state of NC, we had some guys cooking meth get tried on terrorism (chemical weapons!) charges.

[CaseyL]

"Scope creep" is inevitable when there's no institutional constituency for restraint. Law enforcement agencies are notoriously unconstrained.

Espionage and surveillance powers granted to fight WWII were later used to harass dissidents. Surveillance, search and confiscatory powers granted to fight major drug traffickers in the "War on Drugs" expanded to be used against minor players and even innocent bystanders.

A lot of people saw this coming when the Patriot Act was passed. You give authoritarian institutions that kind of power, they're going to use it in ways not originally intended. They always have; they always will; and in this case we're dealing with an Administration already openly hostile to civil liberties.

This, to me, is another argument for ending the Patriot Act altogether, rather than trying to "fix" it.

[Anders Widebrant]

As far as I can tell, Lind does not offer a critique of particular events on the ground, tomsyl. His focus is rather the strategic mistake of smashing Falluja. If he is sniping at the American military, he at least has the decency to aim for the upper strata, most of which is just as far away from Falluja as he is.

But we're straying...

[Matt McIrvin]

Liberals were widely lambasted after September 2001 for continuing to think of the struggle against terrorism as a law-enforcement problem rather than a war. But if that war gets redefined to include all sorts of other law-enforcement actions, it really comes to the same confusion described by different words.