Habeas Corpus

A few months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government transported almost 700 suspected terrorists who had been captured abroad to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where the Bush administration assumed -- wrongly -- that they would have no opportunity to challenge their confinement in a U.S. court. But what if the alleged enemy combatants had been deposited somewhere else -- say, in a prison under the control of the CIA in Egypt or Poland?

The Supreme Court said Friday that it would decide whether U.S. citizens can seek the protection of American courts if they are taken into custody and held by the U.S. military in Iraq. At issue is the reach of the right to habeas corpus, the same question that was before the court this week in a case involving detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The justices in March will hear a pair of cases involving naturalized U.S. citizens who are held in Baghdad.

The Los Angeles district attorney's office on Friday opposed a habeas corpus petition seeking the release of a one-time R&B star who contends he was wrongly convicted of a 1993 arson murder. In an 82-page court filing, prosecutors attacked nearly every aspect of Waymond "Suave" Anderson's petition, asserting that he fabricated an alibi and that the evidence against him remains "overwhelming."

Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is about to adopt an unnecessary and mean-spirited regulation that will make it harder for those on death row to have their cases reviewed in federal court. State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown should make clear that California wants no part of this. To understand what's going on here, you need a little background. Let's say you were convicted of murder in California.

ACCORDING TO Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley, "The Supreme Court follows th' ilection returns." The court may also follow the proceedings of Congress, which has yet to enact legislation restoring habeas corpus rights to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. There, Congress' indolence appears to have roused the court to action, a welcome development in a complex struggle among the branches of our federal government to safeguard the rights we trumpet to the world.

A Senate panel took the first step Thursday toward again giving foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to go to court and seek their freedom. On a mostly party-line vote of 11 to 8, the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee said it would restore the right of habeas corpus that had been taken away in recent years by the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. "Habeas corpus was recklessly undermined in last year's legislation," said Sen. Patrick J.

At her 1994 murder trial, her own children testified that she had grabbed their 4-year-old cousin Lynette Orozco by the hair and shoved her under the water in a plastic wading pool until she drowned. More than a decade later, Dolores Macias' children signed sworn statements saying that their paternal grandmother had brainwashed them into lying about their mother. On Monday, however, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephen A.

Detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were dealt a setback Monday by the Supreme Court, which refused -- for now -- to hear their claim that they were being denied the right to habeas corpus that is protected by the Constitution.

'GUANTANAMO," IN popular parlance, refers both to the U.S. military prison on land leased from Cuba and the legal process (such as it is) made available to the 395 suspected terrorists and collaborators imprisoned there. In both senses, Guantanamo is an embarrassment to the United States. President Bush, who once suggested that he wanted to close Guantanamo, shows no signs of doing so anytime soon, though Secretary of Defense Robert M.

Re "Us to George -- sure, whatever," Opinion, March 16 Bill Maher's assertion that we have given up civil rights for the war in Iraq is idiotic. In wartime, things change. I am perfectly willing to give up anything because, you see, I have nothing to hide. What is he so worried about? MARTHA HAMBY Dallas Every week there is some new federal policy or action that completely goes against principles this country was founded on. How can any American feel good about that?