Supreme Court Denies Cert in Gitmo case

From Legal Times (here):

The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Guantanamo detainees seeking the right to challenge their detention in federal court. The decision, handed down Monday, would seem to clear one hurdle for the government as it moves towards holding military commission hearings for several dozen of the roughly 400 suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo. Earlier this winter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had ruled against the detainees in the case, known as Boumediene v. Bush. Back in December, Legal Times took an in depth look at the Boumediene case and another detention challenge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The court does not announce votes on granting cases, but it takes four votes among the nine justices for an appeal to be heard.

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In this case, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter said they would have accepted the appeals. Two other justices, Anthony Kennedy and John Paul Stevens, said they opposed hearing the cases at this time strictly on procedural grounds. The other justices who did not vote to hear the cases are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

At issue is the writ of habeas corpus, or the right to challenge imprisonment before an independent judge. Congress stripped Guantanamo detainees of the right to challenge their detentions in federal court in the Military Commissions Act last summer, but the new Democratic majority has signaled an interest in revisiting that issue. The next phase of the Guantanamo litigation—barring Congressional intervention— will be for detainees to challenge their status as “enemy combatants” under a limited review process before the D.C. Circuit.

For the full AP report, click here.

For plenty of links to relevant materials, click here.  For a copy of the cert denial, click Download boumediene_sct_denial_of_cert_20070402.pdf

KJ