Will Defend Death penalty charges
Boise Lawyers Will Defend Architect of Sept. 11
By Jill Kuraitis, 4-15-08
Via the Idaho Statesman, the Miami Herald is reporting that Boise attorneys David Nevin and Scott McKay will defend death-penalty charges against Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the terrorist who allegedly planned the attacks of September 11, 2001.
A well-known Navy lawyer, Capt. Scott Prince, will lead the defense team, which will also include another military attorney from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Prince is known for defining waterboarding as torture. Mohammed was waterboarded at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Nevin and McKay have defended an alleged terrorist before when they won acquittal for a doctoral student at the University of Idaho, Sami al-Hussayen, who was accused of helping an al-Qaida front. Nevin was also involved in the Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge case in 1993, eventually getting Kevin Harris acquitted of federal murder charges.
The two will work without pay under a civilian program sponsored by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: A clarification of this story is in order, says Jack King of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“No lawyer could be expected to litigate a capital murder case for many months, far from his home and practice, “without pay,” as Ms. Kuraitis states above.”
Death penalty cases are prohibitively expensive. That is why the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the ACLU created The John Adams Project. The object of this effort is to bring the expertise of the civilian capital defense bar to Guantanamo, with adequate financial resources to assist the appointed military defense lawyers, should the lawyers and their counsel ask. The hope is to provide constitutionally-effective assistance of counsel to “high-value” detainees facing the death penalty before the military commissions.”
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Comments
No lawyer could be expected to litigate a capital murder case for many months, far from his home and practice, "without pay," as Ms. Kuraitis states above.
Death penalty cases are prohibitively expensive. That is why the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the ACLU created The John Adams Project. The object of this effort is to bring the expertise of the civilian capital defense bar to Guantanamo, with adequate financial resources to assist the appointed military defense lawyers, should the lawyers and their counsel ask. The hope is to provide constitutionally-effective assistance of counsel to "high-value" detainees facing the death penalty before the military commissions.
More information on The John Adams Project can be found at http://www.aclu.org and http://www.nacdl.org.
Jack King
Director, Public Affairs and Communications
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Washington DC