[Peace] crimes of sedition

[Darrin Drda]

Hi all: I just read this and thought it was kinda scary.

**********************************
USING SEDITION LAW GIVES U.S. LATITUDE

November 9, 2001 Posted: 1:41 PM EST (1841 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government is relying on a seldom-used but 
powerful legal tool, an 18th-century law on sedition, to investigate the 
Sept. 11 terror attacks.

With roots in laws that date back more than 200 years, the statute gives the 
government great flexibility in assembling prosecutions against people who 
plan but don't carry out criminal acts against the United States.

The government suggested its approach in a perjury indictment last week. The 
federal grand jury that brought the case against an associate of two of the 
hijackers is investigating "seditious conspiracy to levy war against the 
United States," the indictment stated.

Federal prosecutors "appear to be right on the money" in using the sedition 
law to address possible terrorist collaborators, George Washington 
University law professor Stephen Saltzburg said.

"To the extent a jihad" or holy war "is invoked against the United States, 
it's like an announcement that 'I'm putting myself under this statute,"' 
Saltzburg said.

Prosecutors used the seditious conspiracy law to win convictions in a case 
against a Muslim cleric and co-defendants who plotted to blow up the United 
Nations.

Chicago attorney Jeremy Margolis successfully prosecuted four Puerto Rican 
nationalists for seditious conspiracy in the 1980s for planning to bomb a 
Marine training center and an Army Reserve facility.

The object of the conspiracy was to change the policies of the U.S. 
government "as opposed to doing a particular criminal act _ blow that up, 
take that down, shoot that person," Margolis recalled.

Law enforcement officials, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said 
prosecutors are examining other cases in which they might use the sedition 
law against people who did not carry out attacks but had been in various 
stages of planning.

The law imposes up to 20-year prison terms when two or more people "conspire 
to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the government of the United 
States, or to levy war against them."

The U.S. law on sedition dates back to the 1790s when the Alien and Sedition 
acts of the John Adams administration targeted people who criticized the 
government. The acts expired and were not renewed amid a storm of criticism.

A new law passed during the Civil War served as the basis for the current 
statute.

There were Confederate sympathizers in the North and the law was passed to 
make it easier to punish people who conspired against the union, said 
University of Michigan law professor Richard Friedman.

The government used the sedition law after World War I to convict 
anarchists. In the 1950s, the Supreme Court upheld convictions of communists 
on sedition charges for teaching doctrines that were held to be subversive.

"These weren't people blowing things up; they were basically basement 
seminars where people would read Marx," said constitutional law professor 
Richard Primus of the University of Michigan.

"Teaching people that the government is bad in the abstract is a 
constitutional right, but once you go beyond to an agreement to commit 
crimes, that becomes clearly punishable," said UCLA law professor Eugene 
Volokh.

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp